Vera Zorina - Career

Career

She was presented to Max Reinhardt at age 12 who cast her in his A Midsummer Night's Dream (1929) and Tales of Hoffman (1931). A performance at London's Gaiety Theatre led to her entrance into the company of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1933. She changed her stage name to Vera Zorina when she joined the Ballet Russe. She won a lead role in the London company of On Your Toes (1937) and was seen by American film producer Samuel Goldwyn, who signed her to a seven year film contract. Between 1938 and 1946, she would appear in a number of Hollywood movie productions.

One of her most iconic stage roles was the title character in the 1938 Rodgers and Hart musical I Married an Angel, in which she played an exquisite angel who descends from heaven to marry Hungarian banker Dennis King, but whose complete lack of human guile presents him with a whole new set of problems. Her role in the film version was played by Jeanette MacDonald.

Starting in 1948, Zorina was associated with Arthur Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake, in which she played the title role in the first American performance with the New York Philharmonic under Charles Münch. She subsequently played the role many times, notably in the recorded performance from the Royal Festival Hall in June 1966 with the London Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa.

In the 1970s, Vera Zorina was appointed director with the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet (Den Norske Opera & Ballet). In later years, she was active with the Lincoln Center as an adviser and director and for several seasons directed operas at the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. In 1986, Vera Zorina completed her autobiography entitled Zorina (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux. 1986)