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 trip back to Iowa to see family." Dorothy Karayanis met her husband while studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. They planned to marry in September 1956.
The problem, as they always told it, Mayer said, was that Dorothy, then a young singer on the rise, was in the tryouts for the original Broadway production of Candide , which were being held in Boston. "The director gave her one day off to get married," Mayer said. "So she went down to New York and they got married in the chapel at Riverside Church.
" When the couple would relate that story in recent years, Dorothy Karayanis could never resist adding a final flourish, Mayer said. "Dorothy would chime in and say that she had bought her wedding dress for $11 in Filene's Basement," Mayer said. "She would go and get the picture and Plato would say, 'Wasn't it beautiful?' ” Dorothy and Plato Karayanis were like that, Mayer said — utterly partners in everything, even the stories they told.
After marrying, the couple spent eight years performing with opera companies in Germany and Switzerland before returning to the U.S., joining the Metropolitan Opera National Company and performing with opera companies around the country, according to her obituary.
She had a "slightly mysterious quality" onstage, said Charles MacKay, former general director of Santa Fe Opera, who knew Karayanis for many years and saw her perform in two roles there when he was a teenager: Sister Lidoine in Dialogues of the Carmelites in 1966 and the title role of Carmen in 1967. "Dorothy possessed a superb voice, with a smokey tone quality and with very good range from high to low," MacKay wrote in an email. "She had an easy, ringing top voice and a pewter-colored lower voice that was dark and rich, not pushed and strident the way many mezzos sound when they sing low.
She was a wonderful artist who brought roles to life in an interesting and believable way." Dorothy Karayanis retired from singing when Plato Karayanis became general director of the Dallas Opera in 1977. It was a "humble company" at the time, Mayer recalled, and he had his work cut out for him to build it up.
While he had the title, Dorothy Karayanis' contributions to her husband's role — which consisted in large part of fundraising and courting donors — were invaluable. "She was a tremendous support for Plato," Mayer said. "She had a smile that would light up a room .
.. and she was just generous with her kindness and her hospitality.
" Those qualities never faded, although after the couple retired officially and moved to Santa Fe, Chemel said she shied away a bit more from large events. "I think she was was a little worn out by all the events that she attended in Dallas, galas and dinners and whatever," he said. The couple regularly entertained at their home, with Dorothy Karayanis cooking and her husband selecting the wine to match, Mayer said.
"Dorothy, I believe, kept lists of who came to dinner and what she served them, so that she wouldn't duplicate," Chemel recalled. The couple were both deeply involved with First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, where Dorothy Karayanis served as a deacon, another role that highlighted her hospitality. She loved to bake cookies and bring them as gifts to friends; Chemel said at Christmas he would receive a variety pack of seven or eight types of cookies.
At the end of her life, Dorothy Karayanis lived in the memory care unit of The Montecito Santa Fe. Even then, her love for her husband was apparent, said Mayer, who visited her regularly. "One time I asked her, having lived all over the world .
.. where was your favorite place to live?" Mayer said.
"She smiled and just said, 'Anywhere my sweetie was.' ”.
