By rights, Dorothy Krebill Karayanis could have acted like a prima donna. A professional opera singer, she spent years on the stage in the U.S.
and Europe, playing the lead role in Carmen , Suzuki in Madame Butterfly , Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia . Even after her retirement from singing, Karayanis was much in the public eye, supporting her husband, Plato Karayanis, during his years as general director of the Dallas Opera. While she may have accepted the spotlight, Dorothy Karayanis, who moved to Santa Fe with her husband following his retirement in 2000, never demanded it, according to longtime friends.
"She was not a diva," said Janice Mayer, who for years was executive director of the Santa Fe Desert Chorale and first met Dorothy Karayanis through her husband when Mayer was an artist manager in New York. "She could have been, because she sang Carmen in major opera houses. But she was not that.
She was just a lovely, lovely person." Karayanis died Aug. 3 in Santa Fe.
She was 94. Her husband died two years ago. Dorothy Karayanis is survived by many nieces and nephews and their families.
She was born into a Mennonite family in rural Iowa, according to her obituary. Though her musical career and marriage took her far from home, she always stayed in touch with her roots, said Bruce Chemel, a Santa Fe Opera board member and friend of the couple for about 30 years. "She was very close to her family," Chemel said.
"Every year up until really fairly recently ...
they did a road.