[These daily posts will cover little known actors or people that have appeared in more recent films and TV series. Various degrees of information that I was able to find will be given and anything that you can add would be appreciated.]
Serafina Di Leo was a very successful opera singer during the 1930s and 1940s, both in her native America and in Europe. She had a strong, vibrant soprano voice, ideal for many of Verdi's heroines and also for those of other 19th- and 20th-century Italian and French composers. In addition, she was an excellent actress, and after she stopped singing in the 1950s, she appeared in several films, including “The Singer Not the Song” (1961), starring John Mills and Dirk Bogarde.
Born On May 7,1912 in New York City, Serafina was the daughter of first-generation Sicilian immigrants. At the age of 16 she knocked on the door of the Manhattan apartment of Giovanni Martinelli to ask for a ticket to the Metropolitan Opera for “La Juive”, in which the tenor was appearing. The door was answered by the singer's wife, who asked her why she was so keen to hear the opera; Serafina answered that one day she would be singing in it herself. Intrigued, Signora Martinelli asked the girl to sing and was very impressed by her voice. She arranged for various rich, opera-loving patrons of her acquaintance to pay for Serafina to study in Italy.
Di Leo stayed in Italy for nearly three years, and in 1930 made her début as Leonora in Verdi's “Il trovatore at La Scala”, in Milan. There she was heard by the director of the Chicago Civic Opera, who engaged her to sing Leonora the following year. Her American début took place in November 1931 and according to Time magazine, the 19-year-old soprano woke up the next morning famous and with a five-year contract with the Civic Opera.
This contract did not materialize, however, for in 1932 Di Leo, after singing Leonora in Boston, returned to Italy, which remained her base until the end of the Second World War.
In 1960, the year that Di Leo appeared as Jasefa in “The Singer Not the Song”, she also took the part of Senora Zumara in the Hammer horror film “The Curse of the Werewolf” (which is set in Spain), directed by Terence Fisher and starring Oliver Reed.
Serafina Di Leo died in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, England on October 23, 2007.
As mentioned above Serafina’s only Euro-western was a Jasefa in 1961’s “The Singer Not the Song”.
Di LEO, Serafina (Rafi Serafio di Leo)
[5/7/1912, New York City, New York, U.S.A. – 10/23/2007, Bognor Regis, West
Sussex, England, U.K.] – film, TV actress, opera singer, married to Major
Adrian Fitzpatrick Cooke [1915-1957] (1945-1957) mother of Rosalind Margreth di
Leo Fitzpatrick Cooke [1946- ].
The Singer Not the Song – 1961 (Jasefa)
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