Dessi quits show after Zeffirelli calls her `fat`

Daniela Dessi is said to have become angry with Franco Zeffirelli!

London: Italian soprano opera singer Daniela Dessi is said to have become furious after director Franco Zeffirelli said she was too old and too heavy to appear in his production of La Traviata.

Dessi, 52, was due to play the role of the consumptive courtesan Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi`s well-known work, but she angrily stormed out after Zeffirelli, 86, called her "well-built". "She is a long way from my image of Violetta, who is certainly not a well-built girl," a news daily quoted Zeffirelli, who added that she was too old to convincingly appear in a tale of youthful passion, as saying. To make matters worse, he made the comments during a press conference at Rome`s Teatro dell`Opera. Dessi, who has said she weighs just over 10 stone, said she had been publicly humiliated and could not understand why her weight was an issue when so many opera singers were amply proportioned. Opera stars should be judged on their voices, not their girth, she fumed. "Of course I`m angry," she told a magazine Chi. "I still find it hard to believe that, during a press conference, Zeffirelli called me well-built and said I had an `inadequate` voice for the role of Violetta. "I`ve only sung La Traviata in Japan and this would have been my debut in Europe. I was really happy about it. "These days directors unfortunately have excessive power. I could maybe accept that, if they made their views known before one signs the contract, rather than after the artist has started to work with the orchestra conductor and the production is sold out," she stated. Her opera singer husband, Fabio Armiliato, who had been due to play the role of Alfredo, the young man Violetta falls in love with, also pulled out of the production in solidarity with his upset wife. The falling out between the pair happened last month but Dessi says she is now considering taking legal action against Zeffirelli, who is renowned for his work as a director of both opera and films. ANI