Odihneasca'se in pace , atat de emotionanta voce de inger a unei dive adevarate. Cat talent, inteligenta muzicala,frumusete interioara si exterioara❤❤❤❤
Caracterul este postamentul pe care sunt asezate intr-un mod armonios gratia,frumusetea si glasul sublim a doamnei Virginia Zeani. Multumim frumos !!!!
Multumim pentru acest interviu extraordinar cu dna. Virginia Zeani.Sa imbini viata artistica,viata personala in cuplu, cu atata devotament si iubire,rar intalnesti si este de apreciat si de urmat si de altii.
Virginia Zeani este perfecțiunea intruchipata.Pe lângă toate calitatile exceptionale ea poseda acea inteligenta a cantului care nu e la indemana oricui.
La Zeani is such a good person besides a superior level of artistry and singing. What a pleasure her personality, natural point of views about life in general. A great interview performed by a great interviewer. Fericitari din suflet, din Suceava.
Excelent dialog, splendid documentar! Fabuloasa noastră VIrginia Zeani, acest imens dar divin pe care Tatăl Ceresc l-a oferit românilor și omenirii ne emoționează, mereu. Prin vocea uluitoare, frumusețea fizică și sufletească, generozitatea sa ne dă lecții de neprețuit. Studenților mei, de la Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara le povesteam cu totală dedicație despre minunata soprană (o făceam într-o italiană impecabilă, desigur, fiindcă trebuia să le fiu model tinerilor care studiau canto, eu predându-le limba lui Dante ca italienistă ce sunt). Virginia Zeani rămâne o ființă admirabilă, care a știut să fie artistă incomparabilă, soție exemplară, mamă și bunică afectuoasă, profesor de mare valoare. OM. De-aceea, Dumnezeu ne-o ține în viață. Să sperăm din răsputeri că va trece de aniversarea cu numărul 100, la fel de limpede la minte și fire. Grazie infinite, meravigliosissima signora VIrginia Zeani! Doamne, ajută!
Chiar daca nu a fost la fel de cunoscuta si apreciata pe plan mondial la fel de mult ca tragica si tenebroasa Callas ,Zeani a noastra,la fel de talentata nu si'a dorit atat de mult sa fie celebra,nu a fost orgolioasa si egocentrica,ci mult mai inteleapta,modesta si echilibrata. Un om grumos,nu numai o artista de exceptie
La verdad es que Zeani es parte de esa generación de únicos y grandes cantantes, que me parece no se volverá a repetir. Ella en particular podía cantarlo todo,con una gran técnica, gran presencia escénica, y gran corazón. Descanse en paz, la diva. Gracias❤❤❤❤
28,46-34,12 (V.Z.) What curious coincidences I have had in this life! Also, in 1962 I met Domingo, who, I must say, was the most complete tenor I had ever heard. Not because he had a more beautiful voice than Pavaroti, but he was an ideal performer on stage. No one was, on stage, so dedicated to the partner he had, at his debut, in Puccini's Manon Lescaut, in Barcelona. -(Rep.) With you. - (V.Z.) Yes. - (Rep.) You were burning on stage, in Manon Lescaut, with Domingo and more. But it was not every night you sang with Domingo. What happened when you continued to be a passion, a flame and the stage partener was only thinking about the next acute or maybe the steak after the show? - ( V.Z.) Then I will say you another episode. I was in Paris with Nicolai Gedda(?). I know he's still alive, but we don't keep in touch because we only sang together in Paris, La Traviata. It was the last act, he was very relaxed, very sure of himself, a brilliant man with a superb voice. He started the musical phrase and I put my nails in his back and he whispered to me that it hurts. ( La Traviata Virginia Zeani/ Valentin Teodorian, Conductor Corneliu Trăilescu, Director Hero Lupescu, Bucharest, 1965) - (Rep.) Mrs. Zeani, she cannot, does not want, does not conceive of being in any way separated from the one who was more than her husband. Nicola Rossi-Lemeni was her anchor, her light and her endless love too. - (Rep.) There are not many examples of couples in the world of opera. You and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, Violeta Cosoto(?)-?, Mirella Freni and Nicolai Ghiaurov, of course Angela Burlacu and Roberto Alagna (as many as they were). It is not at all easy to share with your life partner the same emotions, the same themes, and, finally, the same common professional destination. How was it for you? How did you get along? - (V.Z.) We loved and respected each other very much. We weren't giving each other advices.
Please can you put captions in English? This looks like an excellent movie. THANK YOU, THANK YOU FOR THESE SPLENDID TRANSLATIONS! which I have just found in time for Mme Zeani's 96th Birthday on 21st October 2021
A little part, with my ( little english). Be understanding and forgive my mistakes, please. 0:42- 1: 39 (Rep.) A typical November day in Florida, when the color of the sky changes dozens of times, it rains for a few minutes, then the sun rises and burns, it gets cloudy again and things continue in the same way. What does not change, however, is the mild temperature (today it is 26-27 degrees Celsius), the incredible green of the lush vegetation and, I say it with all the property of the terms, the kindness of the people. In this form of paradise, different from the emphatic Beverly Hills, but not inferior in terms of charm, with the Atlantic and crocodiles very close, chosed to live one of the greatest glories of the lyrical theater of the twentieth century. 1:40- 2: 22 (V.Z.) - Some crocodiles were tempted to come here. I once found him in the pool (I hope you photographed the pool) and a friend from Romania said: there is something black there. It was a crocodile about two meters long. (Rep.) Ladies and gentlemen, I am Marius Constantinescu and I am glad to make you part of a double musical and media event. It is a rare privilege for any cultural journalist and, at the same time, an absolute premiere for a Romanian television, the access, not only in the home, but also in the life and personal history of the one that Maria Callas said was the only one that really gives her emotions - the soprano VIRGINIA ZEANI. 2:25- 2:54 Virginia Zeani, La Boheme, 1970, Peles Castle, Romania. 2: 55- 3:25 (V.Z.) - My ideas are so overlapping and difficult to explain. But thank you for these questions, which are also very interesting to me, not just to the public. (Rep.) - I only have one more, then. If there is one thing in your life that you would do differently today. (V.Z.)- I know you can't, so no, I don't want to. 3:25- 4: 07 ( Rep) That's how we ended, in 2011, one of those interviews after which, simply, you feel that the air settles differently around you. The joy of meeting Virginia Zeani was and is a moment for which being a cultural journalist still means a reward. For more than four years I fed this joy through phones, e-mails and, when no one was at hand, listening to music. Manon Lescaut, Don Carlos, Traviatta, Tosca, Puritani. Until, a small, lucky star, who must exist up there, gave me another gift, a month after the illustrious soprano's 90th birthday. 4:08- 6: 18 (V.Z.)- Thank you for being so nice to come here to see me after I'm 90 years old. (Following is a sequence in which Virginia Zeani appears on Romanian Television, speaking about her birth place and then there is a recording from RAI). 6:19 - 8:21 (Rep.)- I wonder if sometimes happens to you to separate from yourself and contemplate your life as if it were someone else's? ( V.Z.) - Always. I always dreamed, I certainly dreamed of myself, surrounded by people I met, but who are completely unknown to me. I have such curious dreams that sometimes in the morning I wake up in a different dimension than I am now.I would like to live the next life in another dimension. (Rep.)- If it were a future life, wouldn't it still be in music? (V.Z.)- May be. ( Rep)- Your period of glory, the 50s and 70s, is called the golden age of opera. Why do you and many others (even young people) still refer to that moment as a landmark of great value? (V.Z.)- Yes. This is true.But also before there were valuable performers like Caruso, Titos Schippa, Gigli (?I am not sure) with whom I sang when I was 24 and he 64. He told me that the only thing separating us was his belly, which was obvious then. I was much thinner than I am now. It was an extraordinary experience, unique I can say. I was singing in Cairo and he came to sing Elixir d-amore with me, after I had sung Traviatta and been decorated with the gold medal by King Farouk. I also sang at King Farouk's engagement.(…)
8:22- 10:48 V.Z. -In the lodge, to my left, sat Ali Khan (?) the man who had married a French florist ( I called him Ali Baba). He bought flowers from her and fell in love with her. They came to see me in La Traviata. She just had changed her collection of jewelry. Rep. - Exactly because they had an extraordinary collection of jewelry. V.Z.- Extraordinary, indeed.I was fascinated by what she had. I looked at her with one eye and sang to the audience, excited by what I saw. I didn't have anything then, but I was never complicated by that.I was very young, I was 24 years old and to see all this elegant people, (ambassadors, etc.) around you ... I only had a nice dress. On the stage there were the costumes of the theater, but at the receptions, I only had a dress that I matched, each time, with a scarf of a different color, to be elegant. I only put color in the scarf.In time, I had some beautiful jewelry, but I keep them on the bench. (Rep) - From whom did you learn to be elegant? (V.Z.) - I met Elvira Godeanu ( great romanian stage actress) and I saw the beauty of her movements. I also saw her physical beauty. Normally, I was a bit of a banality, but on stage, I tried to give the intensity of the word and the voice with all my heart, not only from the mask (?!?, italian maschera?). We talk with the mask (?!?) , but the soul must to be under it, to accompany us all our lives. Right now I'm hoarse, I hope it passes by tomorrow and I have to hide my voice and speak in the mask, as they say. Talking in a mask (?!?) also helps you sing. ( She is singing a few notes and continue… ) That means the mask, the vocal ease of expressing something. 10:49- 11:31 Sequences from La Traviata, 1965, Bucharest, Palace Hall. Conductor: Cornel Trăilescu. Director: Hero Lupescu. (....) PS I don't know what Mrs. Zeani means when she says mask. The word she uttered in Romanian would be translated into English by mask. But the lady also uses Italian words / expressions and I don't really know if I translated correctly.
11: 31- 14: 54 Virginea Zeani, 1980, interview for Romanian Television. Traviata is the opera I have sung 648 times, so I think it's an absolute world record. Many of my admirers calculated that I sang Traviata as many times as all the other sopranos sang together. But I don't think that any of them had the physical endurance to endure so many Traviatas and to die so many times on stage. (Rep.) -For many artists, singing Traviata at the age of about twenty would be a bit earlier. (V.Z.) - Yes. For today's mentality, it's early. But for me.. In 1945 I was twenty years old, I had gone through the whole war, which lasted five years. I went through great difficulties. My mother was very ill since our house was attacked by a Russian. I was 18 years old and I ran away through a window. Then I got bronchitis, which became chronic. I have escaped of the Russian, but I was left with a disease that has harmed and still harms me. I remember that at the age of five or six, I thought that music was so beautiful, so why not invent a song and sing to my mother: I want a cake today. My mother used to say: I have a daughter and she's crazy. My grandmothers, women from the country, used to say to me: darling, you can't sing like that because you are a delicate girl and your lungs are so sensitive. With this desire to understand many things, when I was seven years old, I went to Bucharest. In primary school, they used to call me “boanghena”, because I spoke with the accent from Solovăstru (the place of birth, from Transilvania). But I started talking like the people of Bucharest. I finished high school and enrolled in the faculty of literature and philosophy, which, to my shame, I did not attend, because I had to prepare musically to be able to go in Italy at the age of nineteen or twenty. (… Manon Lescaut, Giacomo Puccini, RAI 1980).
23,50-28,46 ( Puccini, Madama Butterfly, Virginia Zeani, 1980 RAI) - (V.Z.) In life, you have to know how to give up something. I gave up the word celebrity. I was an INTERPRETER, with my soul, with my training, and I can say that, in another life, I would like to be even better. - (Rep.) You gave up the word celebrity, but maybe it didn't give up on you. What may have happened was that it stopped at a point. - (V.Z.) Yes, yes. - ( REP) Or you didn't take that step you were talking about in the case of Maria Callas or Renata Tebaldi. - (V.Z.) Yes, but I don't regret it. I've never regretted it, because that's who I am. They were them. - (Rep.) Artists don't have holidays, they don't have New Year's Eve, they don't have Christmas (V.Z. they don't have family), they don't have these things that we, other people, have. Moreover, they are not allowed to show those in front of them, the public, that maybe they are having a worse time or having a harder day, from different points of view. Have you ever masked your pain or suffering behind the costume of Tosca or Violeta, Aida? - (V.Z.) We know how to hide these things. But sometimes, if someone who knows us is in public, can see a slight change. I mean, maybe more control, less spontaneity… - (Rep.) Less abandonment. - (V.Z.) Yes. - ( Rep,) How were you before the show? - (V.Z.) I was a normal person. I didn't think about being too fat or thin. I was normal. I wasn't thinking of eating much because the meat cost so much. Anyway, I was eating what I was supposed to and I wasn't gaining weight back then. Now, if I eat a bit more, it's a problem. -( Rep.) You were afraid that the voice will not be okay, never drink cold... -( V.Z.) No, I always drank cold. And Nicola the same. Because I got used to it. I didn't know that many colleagues heated their water by hand. I liked ice and cold water. - (Rep.) What was not good for you? - (V.Z.) Bad people. - (Rep.) Were there bad people arround you? I don't understand what it is about your personality that can cause them to harm you? -(V.Z.) When I had an important success, many colleagues, maybe they weren't bad but they were jealous. I felt that . Pavarotti was never jealous. I met him when he was twenty years old. I was thirty and I was singing with Krauss(?) in Modena, Traviata. His father was in the choir and he introduced me to Pavarotti, who was a superb young man and had studied singing with Arrigo Pola, who was the first tenor I sang with in my debut in La Traviata in Bologna.Colzani, he (Pavarotti) and later I found out that he was Pavarotti's teacher ( Pola).
34,13- 38,47 - (Rep) You know, much better than I do, that there is a tension in the case of artists, who have, on the one hand, their way among the stars, there on stage, but who often have family life and, above all, parenthood( life of parent?). How did you manage to control this tension? - (V.Z.) My dear, it's the hardest thing in the world. Being a major singer, traveling all over the world and having a kid or two or three means sacrificing them. You have a sacrifice to make. You, because you can't stay with them, and they too, because they can't stay with their mother. And then you try a substitute, like I did for my boy. We had a kind of nanny who stayed with us for about 32 years. She helped me to raise him. We stayed together as much as we could. But we had to study, so in the afternoon we both missed at least two hours to go to our pianist each. We didn't study at home so that we don't influence each other. I had my pianist and he had his pianist. So, we tried to do everything possible to, as we say in Romanian, reconcile both the goat and the cabbage. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I didn't, because Alexandru had many activities. He was an athlete (Karate champion), he watched movies with Jacques Yves Cousteau, who was his idol. He ended up being a very important surgeon doctor in Rome. Now he lives close to me. I was angry with America because, in the year I married Nicola, 1956, I had a three-year contract with the Metropolitan Opera. But in 1956 I got married and in 1957 I gave birth, so I could not respect the contract. This affected my career, but I was happy the way I was. I sang at La Scala and in all the Italian theaters. I sang abroad, I sang in France a lot, in Germany (less because the German language was more difficult for me). Everything was going well for me. I married an extraordinarily intelligent man, a man of culture, from all points of view, with whom I met and grew up together. (37.12 Interview Virginia Zeani and Nicola Rossi Lemeni, Romanian Television, Bucharest , 1970).
Odihneasca'se in pace , atat de emotionanta voce de inger a unei dive adevarate. Cat talent, inteligenta muzicala,frumusete interioara si exterioara❤❤❤❤
Si la 90 de ani arată Formidabil!
Caracterul este postamentul pe care sunt asezate intr-un mod armonios gratia,frumusetea si glasul sublim a doamnei Virginia Zeani. Multumim frumos !!!!
Multumim pentru acest interviu extraordinar cu dna. Virginia Zeani.Sa imbini viata artistica,viata personala in cuplu,
cu atata devotament si iubire,rar intalnesti si este de apreciat si de urmat si de altii.
Mulțumim pentru interviul extraordinar
Nu stiu ce mananca romancele , dar mie mi se face pielea gaina cand ascult Virginia Zeani sau Angela Gheorghiu in roluri dramatice.
Mulțumim pentru tot ! Un OM de mare valoare peste care Dumnezeu și- a revărsat harul ! ❤🙏🌷
Cand o ascult cantand am senzatia ca simt mana lui Dumnezeu pe umarul meu
Virginia Zeani este perfecțiunea intruchipata.Pe lângă toate calitatile exceptionale ea poseda acea inteligenta a cantului care nu e la indemana oricui.
Ce mă bucur că această legendă a liocuit in satul în care locuiesc eu, Solovăstru🤗
Quite a honor, indeed... She was one of the main names of the XX century. O adevarata comoara a Romaniei.
O mare Doamnă cu o voce fermecătoare și de o frumusețe ca a unei prințese de Basm.
Fascinantă, fascinantă, o mare personalitate.
Mulțumim !
Chiar o lectie de umanitate, de viata! 🙏👏🤗😚
Ce artista extraordinara!!! O doamna desavarsita!!!
Adevăratele valori ale existentei, printre altele care mai sunt.... Va mulțumim ca existați!!!
La Zeani is such a good person besides a superior level of artistry and singing. What a pleasure her personality, natural point of views about life in general. A great interview performed by a great interviewer. Fericitari din suflet, din Suceava.
Noi vă mulțumim, d-na Virginia Zeani!
Mă trec fiorii când o ascult!
O ARTISTA desăvârșita ! UNiQUe Artistry.... truly Devine!
La multi ani si multa sanatate 😍
O Doamna Româncă adevărată o cintareata de operă deosebită din adevărata diaspora românească
Excelent dialog, splendid documentar! Fabuloasa noastră VIrginia Zeani, acest imens dar divin pe care Tatăl Ceresc l-a oferit românilor și omenirii ne emoționează, mereu. Prin vocea uluitoare, frumusețea fizică și sufletească, generozitatea sa ne dă lecții de neprețuit. Studenților mei, de la Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara le povesteam cu totală dedicație despre minunata soprană (o făceam într-o italiană impecabilă, desigur, fiindcă trebuia să le fiu model tinerilor care studiau canto, eu predându-le limba lui Dante ca italienistă ce sunt). Virginia Zeani rămâne o ființă admirabilă, care a știut să fie artistă incomparabilă, soție exemplară, mamă și bunică afectuoasă, profesor de mare valoare. OM. De-aceea, Dumnezeu ne-o ține în viață. Să sperăm din răsputeri că va trece de aniversarea cu numărul 100, la fel de limpede la minte și fire. Grazie infinite, meravigliosissima signora VIrginia Zeani! Doamne, ajută!
Chiar daca nu a fost la fel de cunoscuta si apreciata pe plan mondial la fel de mult ca tragica si tenebroasa Callas ,Zeani a noastra,la fel de talentata nu si'a dorit atat de mult sa fie celebra,nu a fost orgolioasa si egocentrica,ci mult mai inteleapta,modesta si echilibrata. Un om grumos,nu numai o artista de exceptie
LADY VIRGINIA ZEANI 💋♥️
O LEGENDĂ ÎNTRE LEGENDE 💯💥
BEAUTY 🌹RESPECT 👍🤗👏
La verdad es que Zeani es parte de esa generación de únicos y grandes cantantes, que me parece no se volverá a repetir. Ella en particular podía cantarlo todo,con una gran técnica, gran presencia escénica, y gran corazón. Descanse en paz, la diva. Gracias❤❤❤❤
Impresionant O invitata deosebita Minunata emisiune
she is a gorgeous lady
Odihnã veşnicã! 😢😢😢
Fantastica voce!
LEGEND❤️
28,46-34,12
(V.Z.) What curious coincidences I have had in this life!
Also, in 1962 I met Domingo, who, I must say, was the most complete tenor I had ever heard. Not because he had a more beautiful voice than Pavaroti, but he was an ideal performer on stage. No one was, on stage, so dedicated to the partner he had, at his debut, in Puccini's Manon Lescaut, in Barcelona.
-(Rep.) With you.
- (V.Z.) Yes.
- (Rep.) You were burning on stage, in Manon Lescaut, with Domingo and more. But it was not every night you sang with Domingo. What happened when you continued to be a passion, a flame and the stage partener was only thinking about the next acute or maybe the steak after the show?
- ( V.Z.) Then I will say you another episode. I was in Paris with Nicolai Gedda(?). I know he's still alive, but we don't keep in touch because we only sang together in Paris, La Traviata. It was the last act, he was very relaxed, very sure of himself, a brilliant man with a superb voice. He started the musical phrase and I put my nails in his back and he whispered to me that it hurts.
( La Traviata Virginia Zeani/ Valentin Teodorian, Conductor Corneliu Trăilescu, Director Hero Lupescu, Bucharest, 1965)
- (Rep.) Mrs. Zeani, she cannot, does not want, does not conceive of being in any way separated from the one who was more than her husband. Nicola Rossi-Lemeni was her anchor, her light and her endless love too.
- (Rep.) There are not many examples of couples in the world of opera.
You and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, Violeta Cosoto(?)-?, Mirella Freni and Nicolai Ghiaurov, of course Angela Burlacu and Roberto Alagna (as many as they were).
It is not at all easy to share with your life partner the same emotions, the same themes, and, finally, the same common professional destination. How was it for you? How did you get along?
- (V.Z.) We loved and respected each other very much. We weren't giving each other advices.
Minunata!!!!
Vă iubesc stimata Doamna Virgina Zeani ,va stimez și va apreciez !!! Doamne ce frumoasa sunteți! !!! Sunteți fascinata !!!!
Superb
Please can you put captions in English? This looks like an excellent movie. THANK YOU, THANK YOU FOR THESE SPLENDID TRANSLATIONS! which I have just found in time for Mme Zeani's 96th Birthday on 21st October 2021
CharlotteinWeimar, what a great ideea! It is a beautiful interview!⚘❤
A little part, with my ( little english). Be understanding and forgive my mistakes, please.
0:42- 1: 39
(Rep.) A typical November day in Florida, when the
color of the sky changes dozens of times, it rains for a few minutes, then the sun rises and burns, it gets cloudy again and things continue in the same way.
What does not change, however, is the mild temperature (today it is 26-27 degrees Celsius), the incredible green of the lush vegetation and, I say it with all the property of the terms, the kindness of the people.
In this form of paradise, different from the emphatic Beverly Hills, but not inferior in
terms of charm, with the Atlantic and crocodiles very close, chosed to live one of the greatest glories of the lyrical theater of the twentieth century.
1:40- 2: 22
(V.Z.) - Some crocodiles were tempted to come here. I once found him in the pool (I hope you photographed the pool) and a friend from Romania said: there is something black there. It was a crocodile about two meters long.
(Rep.)
Ladies and gentlemen, I am Marius Constantinescu and I am glad to make you part of a double musical and media event. It is a rare privilege for any cultural journalist and, at the same time, an absolute premiere for a Romanian television, the access, not only in the home, but also in the life and personal history of the one that Maria Callas said was the only one that really gives her emotions - the soprano VIRGINIA ZEANI.
2:25- 2:54
Virginia Zeani, La Boheme, 1970, Peles Castle, Romania.
2: 55- 3:25
(V.Z.) - My ideas are so overlapping and difficult to explain. But thank you for these questions, which are also very interesting to me, not just to the public.
(Rep.) - I only have one more, then. If there is one thing in your life that you would do differently today.
(V.Z.)- I know you can't, so no, I don't want to.
3:25- 4: 07
( Rep) That's how we ended, in 2011, one of those interviews after which, simply, you feel that the air settles differently around you.
The joy of meeting Virginia Zeani was and is a moment for which being a cultural journalist still means a reward. For more than four years I fed this joy through phones, e-mails and, when no one was at hand, listening to music. Manon Lescaut, Don Carlos, Traviatta, Tosca, Puritani.
Until, a small, lucky star, who must exist up there, gave me another gift, a month after the illustrious soprano's 90th birthday.
4:08- 6: 18
(V.Z.)- Thank you for being so nice to come here to see me after I'm 90 years old.
(Following is a sequence in which Virginia Zeani appears on Romanian Television, speaking about her birth place and then there is a recording from RAI).
6:19 - 8:21
(Rep.)- I wonder if sometimes happens to you to separate from yourself and contemplate your life as if it were someone else's?
( V.Z.) -
Always. I always dreamed, I certainly dreamed of myself, surrounded by people I met, but who are completely unknown to me. I have such curious dreams that sometimes in the morning I wake up in a different dimension than I am now.I would like to live the next life in another dimension.
(Rep.)- If it were a future life, wouldn't it still be in music?
(V.Z.)- May be.
( Rep)- Your period of glory, the 50s and 70s, is called the golden age of opera. Why do you and many others (even young people) still refer to that moment as a landmark of great value?
(V.Z.)- Yes. This is true.But also before there were valuable performers like Caruso, Titos Schippa, Gigli (?I am not sure) with whom I sang when I was 24 and he 64.
He told me that the only thing separating us was his belly, which was obvious then. I was much thinner than I am now. It was an extraordinary experience, unique I can say. I was singing in Cairo and he came to sing Elixir d-amore with me, after I had sung Traviatta and been decorated with the gold medal by King Farouk. I also sang at King Farouk's engagement.(…)
8:22- 10:48
V.Z. -In the lodge, to my left, sat Ali Khan (?) the man who had married a French florist ( I called him Ali Baba). He bought flowers from her and fell in love with her. They came to see me in La Traviata. She just had changed her collection of jewelry.
Rep. - Exactly because they had an extraordinary collection of jewelry.
V.Z.- Extraordinary, indeed.I was fascinated by what she had. I looked at her with one eye and sang to the audience, excited by what I saw. I didn't have anything then, but I was never complicated by that.I was very young, I was 24 years old and to see all this elegant people, (ambassadors, etc.) around you ...
I only had a nice dress. On the stage there were the costumes of the theater, but at the receptions, I only had a dress that I matched, each time, with a scarf of a different color, to be elegant. I only put color in the scarf.In time, I had some beautiful jewelry, but I keep them on the bench.
(Rep) - From whom did you learn to be elegant?
(V.Z.) - I met Elvira Godeanu ( great romanian stage actress) and I saw the beauty of her movements. I also saw her physical beauty. Normally, I was a bit of a banality, but on stage, I tried to give the intensity of the word and the voice with all my heart, not only from the mask (?!?, italian maschera?).
We talk with the mask (?!?) , but the soul must to be under it, to accompany us all our lives. Right now I'm hoarse, I hope it passes by tomorrow and I have to hide my voice and speak in the mask, as they say. Talking in a mask (?!?) also helps you sing.
( She is singing a few notes and continue… ) That means the mask, the vocal ease of expressing something.
10:49- 11:31
Sequences from La Traviata, 1965, Bucharest, Palace Hall.
Conductor: Cornel Trăilescu.
Director: Hero Lupescu. (....)
PS
I don't know what Mrs. Zeani means when she says mask.
The word she uttered in Romanian would be translated into English by mask.
But the lady also uses Italian words / expressions and I don't really know if I translated correctly.
11: 31- 14: 54
Virginea Zeani, 1980, interview for Romanian Television.
Traviata is the opera I have sung 648 times, so I think it's an absolute world record. Many of my admirers calculated that I sang Traviata as many times as all the other sopranos sang together. But I don't think that any of them had the physical endurance to endure so many Traviatas and to die so many times on stage.
(Rep.) -For many artists, singing Traviata at the age of about twenty would be a bit earlier.
(V.Z.) - Yes. For today's mentality, it's early.
But for me.. In 1945 I was twenty years old, I had gone through the whole war, which lasted five years. I went through great difficulties. My mother was very ill since our house was attacked by a Russian. I was 18 years old and I ran away through a window. Then I got bronchitis, which became chronic.
I have escaped of the Russian, but I was left with a disease that has harmed and still harms me.
I remember that at the age of five or six, I thought that music was so beautiful, so why not invent a song and sing to my mother: I want a cake today.
My mother used to say: I have a daughter and she's crazy. My grandmothers, women from the country, used to say to me: darling, you can't sing like that because you are a delicate girl and your lungs are so sensitive.
With this desire to understand many things, when I was seven years old, I went to Bucharest. In primary school, they used to call me “boanghena”, because I spoke with the accent from Solovăstru (the place of birth, from Transilvania). But I started talking like the people of Bucharest. I finished high school and enrolled in the faculty of literature and philosophy, which, to my shame, I did not attend, because I had to prepare musically to be able to go in Italy at the age of nineteen or twenty.
(… Manon Lescaut, Giacomo Puccini, RAI 1980).
@@ionvinca4248 Thank you!!!!!!!!
❤️❤️❤️🙏🙏🙏
What a handsome man!
What kind of teachers were the other sopranos of her generation?
Felicitări pentru acest interviu-eveniment! Virginia Zeani este sublimă!
Alt interviu. czcams.com/video/HGLklWNkkH8/video.html
interviul asta ar trebui tradus in engleza
Is it possible to offer titles in multiple languages?
23,50-28,46
( Puccini, Madama Butterfly, Virginia Zeani, 1980 RAI)
- (V.Z.) In life, you have to know how to give up something. I gave up the word celebrity.
I was an INTERPRETER, with my soul, with my training, and I can say that, in another life, I would like to be even better.
- (Rep.) You gave up the word celebrity, but maybe it didn't give up on you. What may have happened was that it stopped at a point.
- (V.Z.) Yes, yes.
- ( REP) Or you didn't take that step you were talking about in the case of Maria Callas or Renata Tebaldi.
- (V.Z.) Yes, but I don't regret it. I've never regretted it, because that's who I am. They were them.
- (Rep.) Artists don't have holidays, they don't have New Year's Eve, they don't have Christmas (V.Z. they don't have family), they don't have these things that we, other people, have.
Moreover, they are not allowed to show those in front of them, the public, that maybe they are having a worse time or having a harder day, from different points of view. Have you ever masked your pain or suffering behind the costume of Tosca or Violeta, Aida?
- (V.Z.) We know how to hide these things. But sometimes, if someone who knows us is in public, can see a slight change. I mean, maybe more control, less spontaneity…
- (Rep.) Less abandonment.
- (V.Z.) Yes.
- ( Rep,) How were you before the show?
- (V.Z.) I was a normal person. I didn't think about being too fat or thin. I was normal. I wasn't thinking of eating much because the meat cost so much. Anyway, I was eating what I was supposed to and I wasn't gaining weight back then. Now, if I eat a bit more, it's a problem.
-( Rep.) You were afraid that the voice will not be okay, never drink cold...
-( V.Z.) No, I always drank cold. And Nicola the same.
Because I got used to it. I didn't know that many colleagues heated their water by hand. I liked ice and cold water.
- (Rep.) What was not good for you?
- (V.Z.) Bad people.
- (Rep.) Were there bad people arround you?
I don't understand what it is about your personality that can cause them to harm you?
-(V.Z.) When I had an important success, many colleagues, maybe they weren't bad but they were jealous. I felt that . Pavarotti was never jealous.
I met him when he was twenty years old. I was thirty and I was singing with Krauss(?) in Modena, Traviata. His father was in the choir and he introduced me to Pavarotti, who was a superb young man and had studied singing with Arrigo Pola, who was the first tenor I sang with in my debut in La Traviata in Bologna.Colzani, he (Pavarotti) and later I found out that he was Pavarotti's teacher ( Pola).
TRADUZIONE PER FAVORE
Thumbs down for no sub-titles.. had no idea what she was saying or that gorgeous interviewer was saying!
Postamentu sau testamentu
nu cred ca sunt crocodili, ci aligatori. aligatorii nu sunt atat de agresivi cum sunt crocodilii
Postamenu sau testamentu
no sub titles? how dumb is that???
34,13- 38,47
- (Rep) You know, much better than I do, that there is a tension in the case of artists, who have, on the one hand, their way among the stars, there on stage, but who often have family life and, above all, parenthood( life of parent?). How did you manage to control this tension?
- (V.Z.) My dear, it's the hardest thing in the world.
Being a major singer, traveling all over the world and having a kid or two or three means sacrificing them.
You have a sacrifice to make. You, because you can't stay with them, and they too, because they can't stay with their mother.
And then you try a substitute, like I did for my boy. We had a kind of nanny who stayed with us for about 32 years.
She helped me to raise him.
We stayed together as much as we could.
But we had to study, so in the afternoon we both missed at least two hours to go to our pianist each. We didn't study at home so that we don't influence each other.
I had my pianist and he had his pianist. So, we tried to do everything possible to, as we say in Romanian, reconcile both the goat and the cabbage.
Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I didn't, because Alexandru had many activities. He was an athlete (Karate champion), he watched movies with Jacques Yves Cousteau, who was his idol.
He ended up being a very important surgeon doctor in Rome.
Now he lives close to me.
I was angry with America because, in the year I married Nicola, 1956, I had a three-year contract with the Metropolitan Opera.
But in 1956 I got married and in 1957 I gave birth, so I could not respect the contract. This affected my career, but I was happy the way I was. I sang at La Scala and in all the Italian theaters. I sang abroad, I sang in France a lot, in Germany (less because the German language was more difficult for me). Everything was going well for me.
I married an extraordinarily intelligent man, a man of culture, from all points of view, with whom I met and grew up together. (37.12 Interview Virginia Zeani and Nicola Rossi Lemeni, Romanian Television, Bucharest , 1970).