∻y the time I was 7, I knew a thousand jokes. I wanted to be Elvis Presley, and at 6 I was already lip-syncing to his records and putting on magic shows, she told The New York Times in 1985. My grandmother read cards and tea leaves down in Greenwich Village she never charged people money and I have a little bit of that gift.Ĭamille Saviola was born on July 16, 1950, in the Bronx to Michael and Mary (D∮sopo) Saviola. I went in every character actress was there and did a little reading, the real thing, she said, referring not to a script reading but to a tarot card reading. In a 1995 interview with a ∽eep Space Nine fan magazine that is quoted on the website Memory Alpha, Saviola talked about how she got the part. Though she appeared in only four episodes, from 1993 to 1996, Saviola was well-known to followers of the franchise, many of whom posted about her death on social media. She endeared herself to a different group of fans when she was cast in ∽eep Space Nine as Kai Opaka, a spiritual leader on the planet Bajor. Miller wrote in reviewing that performance in the Los Angeles Times. ∺s Mother Courage, Camille Saviola is wily, indomitable and eminently practical, Daryl H.
In 2005, for instance, she starred in a production of Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brechts famed anti-war play, in Pasadena, California. She was featured in a comic number, The Germans at the Spa.īut she wasnt limited to comedy. Onstage, she was best known for originating the role of Mama Maddelena, a spa manager, in the original production of Nine, the Arthur Kopit-Maury Yeston musical about a film director having a midlife crisis, which opened on Broadway in May 1982 and ran for almost two years. One character she played in more than one cabaret show received the Ten Commandments of Soul from James Brown, earning her something of a nickname: the Italian Godmother of Soul. Saviola frequently drew comparisons to Ethel Merman for her big voice, which she liked to use to comic effect. She was 71.Īlyssa Romeo, a great-niece, said the cause was heart failure. 28 in a hospital in North Bergen, New Jersey. Camille Saviola, an actress and singer who made an impression in the musical Nine on Broadway, in assorted cabaret spoofs and on television in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and other series, died Oct.