Renowned opera singer Wilhelmenia Fernandez-Smith, of Lexington, has died

A local obituary states simply that Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez-Smith, 75, who died Feb. 2, was a special education teacher at Tates Creek Elementary School and a member of Main Street Baptist Church.

While those are the capacities in which many Lexingtonians knew her, she also was a renowned soprano who was known for the 1981 French thriller “Diva” and who performed throughout Europe and the United States during her operatic career.

Fernandez-Smith died at her home in Lexington and was to be buried in Lexington Cemetery following services Friday at Main Street Baptist Church, where the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that she led the children’s choir.

“She sang the popular opera ‘Aida’ in Paris, London, Belgium, Germany and Australia, but perhaps the most memorable performance was in Luxor at the splendorous ancient Thebes and the Valley of the Kings, in front of the Egyptian pyramids,” an obituary by The Philadelphia Tribune stated.

She won London’s Laurence Olivier Award in 1992 for Best Actress in a Musical for “Carmen Jones.”

Fernandez-Smith was a Philadelphia native and attended the Julliard School of Music in New York and the Academy for Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, according to the Tribune.

She told a Herald-Leader reporter in 2002 that she got her start when, at age 7, “her grandmother marched her to the front of Tasker Street Baptist Church in Philadelphia one Sunday morning and said ‘sing for the people.’”

Fernandez-Smith was 13 years old when “she saw her first opera, ‘Carmen,’ and thought, ‘That’s what my voice can do. Now, I know where my energies can be channeled,’” the article stated.

She debuted in “Porgy and Bess” at the Houston Grand Opera, where in 1977 she met the late Andrew Smith, a baritone and Lexington native who would become her husband.

Fernandez-Smith went on to perform with Plácido Domingo and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in the Parisian production of “La Boheme” in 1979, according to an Operawire obituary.

But it was her performance in the film “Diva” that catapulted her career, said Everett McCorvey, director of the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre and the founder and director of the American Spiritual Ensemble.

McCorvey said he’s working with the Kentucky Theatre to arrange a showing of the movie in her honor, but a date had not been set as of Saturday.

Fernandez-Smith began spending more time in Central Kentucky after Andrew Smith returned to the area in 1996 to direct the voice program at Kentucky State University.

She eventually left her home base in Philadelphia to settle in Lexington.

She helped Smith work with students at KSU and starred in KSU productions of “Carmen Jones” and “Amahl and the Night Visitors” between international concert engagements, according to the 2002 Herald-Leader article.

McCorvey said she came to him one day and announced that she’d like to complete her degree in vocal performance at the University of Kentucky.

“I was shocked in a way, because at that point, she was an international star,” McCorvey recalled in a telephone interview. “My first response to her was, ‘You should be teaching us.’”

He said Fernandez-Smith “felt the degree was really important to have,” and “that was really exciting for us to have an alum of her stature.”

She completed her degree in 2007, he said.

She also earned an education degree from Georgetown College, the Inquirer reported.

“She never stopped studying,” McCorvey said.

Whit Whitaker, who is president of the Lexington-Fayette NAACP and has been active in Lexington’s vocal scene, said he knew Fernandez-Smith as a woman with “a passion for kids.”

“She certainly .... didn’t present herself as a diva, so to speak, or an attention-getter.” he said.

“She was strong-willed,” he said, which was represented in the roles she took, but Whitaker said “she had a humbleness about her. She was purposeful and had a strong personality, but she was warm.”

McCorvey agreed that Fernandez Smith had an unassuming nature.

“Wilhelmenia was always a very quiet person and did not crave the limelight,” he said. “Although the limelight craved her.”

She is survived by her daughter, Sheena Fernandez, of Georgia, and her sister, Janice Wiggins, of Delaware, according to Kerr Brothers Funeral Home.