Vivian Della Chiesa

Vivian Della Chiesa (October 9, 1915 – January 6, 2009) was an American lyric soprano born in Chicago, Illinois, into an Italian family. Her mother, Dulia (Morelli) Della Chiesa, was an accomplished pianist whose own father had been a conductor in Italy, and she began teaching Vivian piano at an early age. Della Chiesa also studied singing and violin, and by age ten had developed a strong interest in opera. Her education extended to foreign languages, gymnastics, and dancing. She attended Roosevelt High School in East Chicago, Indiana, and later the Chicago Musical College. During her teenage years she studied for three years with Marion Claire of the Chicago Opera Company, with those lessons financed by a philanthropist. Beginning in 1934, she studied with Forrest Lamont, formerly a leading tenor of the Chicago Opera, continuing until his death at the end of 1937.

Her professional career was launched in 1935 when she won a contest sponsored by WBBM, the Chicago affiliate of the CBS network, earning a contract worth one hundred dollars per week for thirteen weekly radio appearances. Those broadcasts attracted the attention of Paul Longone, the impresario of the Chicago Opera, who invited her to audition. She secured a three-year engagement with the company, making her Chicago debut on November 15, 1936, as Mimì in La Bohème. Her roles with the company also included Adina in L'Elisir d'Amore, Micaela in Carmen, Marguerite in Faust, and Eudoxie in La Juive. In 1943, she sang twice under the baton of composer Italo Montemezzi in his own works, performing Fiora in L'Amore dei tre re and, on October 9, creating the role of Giselda in the first performance of L'Incantesimo with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. She sang with the San Francisco Opera in 1944, appearing as Alice in Falstaff and Marguerite in Faust, and returned in 1945 for productions including Boris Godunov, in which she sang Marina in Italian alongside Ezio Pinza, as well as Cavalleria Rusticana, Don Giovanni, and La Bohème. Della Chiesa also performed with the St. Louis Opera, the Cincinnati Opera, and the Havana International Opera. In 1947, she appeared with the New York City Opera as Maddalena in Andrea Chenier, the production that constitutes her Broadway credit. She additionally performed as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Radio was a central component of Della Chiesa's career throughout the 1940s and into the early 1950s. She sang on numerous programs, among them the Carnation Hour, the Magic Key, the Firestone Hour, the Album of Familiar Music, the American Melody Hour, and the Standard Hour. At one point she was broadcasting simultaneously on CBS, NBC, and Mutual. A particularly significant moment in her radio career came on January 24, 1943, when she performed in a broadcast of Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem with conductor Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, a concert that Opera News has cited as the work for which she is best remembered. Her appearances with the NBC Symphony under Toscanini that year were widely regarded as a high point of her career.

In the 1950s, Della Chiesa transitioned into nightclub performance, headlining at major venues in Las Vegas, Reno, and other cities across the United States, including the Empire Room at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. She was listed among celebrity performers at the Deauville hotel in Miami Beach in 1970. During the late 1960s, she also spent a period as an afternoon television show hostess on Cincinnati's WLWT. On October 9, 1959, she performed the national anthem before the sixth and final game of the World Series at Comiskey Park in Chicago. After her performing career concluded, Della Chiesa worked as a voice teacher and as a fundraiser for charity.

In her personal life, Della Chiesa moved to Huntington, Long Island, in the late 1950s, bringing her widowed mother with her. She shared her home with her widowed sister, niece, and nephew for an extended period. She married three times; her third husband, Alfred J. Ré, predeceased her. She died on January 6, 2009, at a nursing home in Huntington, Long Island, and is buried at St. Patrick Cemetery in Huntington.