Wilhelmenia Fernandez

Wilhelmenia Fernandez, sometimes billed as Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, is an American soprano.

Wilhelmenia Fernandez
Born1949
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
GenresOpera (soprano)

Biography

Wilhelmenia Fernandez was born in Philadelphia in 1949. She appeared in the 1981 film Diva by French director Jean-Jacques Beineix.[1]

Fernandez's early training was at the Philadelphia Academy of Vocal Arts, followed by a scholarship at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Her operatic debut was as Bess in Porgy and Bess, for Houston Grand Opera, a production which toured both the U.S. and Europe.

She made her début in Paris as Musetta in La bohème (with Plácido Domingo and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa), and at the New York City Opera in the same role in 1982.

Since then she has sung in operas and recitals in cities all over the world. Her more notable roles have been the title roles in Carmen, Carmen Jones (for which she received the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1992 as Best Actress in a Musical), and Aïda (a role she has performed in Luxor and at the Egyptian pyramids).

She has made recordings of George Gershwin songs and of Negro spirituals.

She has not appeared in a feature film since Diva, according to the IMDb database, though she performed on the soundtrack of Someone to Watch Over Me and as herself on television.

gollark: Hmm, would there be some way to adjust the frequency without killing and restarting the rtl_fm process?
gollark: I *might* be.
gollark: Bold of you to assume I did any anyway.
gollark: Hmm, the most convoluted and reasonably practical way to do this would be to... use my RTL-SDR to listen to Radio 4, but hook it up to my server, run it through some kind of audio compression thing, somehow figure out how to stream the resulting audio over HTTP, then stick that on my website.
gollark: Hmm. I should really listen to these announcements... what's the most convoluted way to do that, I wonder.

References
  1. HEATON, MICHAEL. Soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez Soars from Philadelphia's Ghetto to Paris Glamour in Diva People, 9 May 1983

Wilhelmenia Fernandez on IMDb

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