Christine Stanley, a playwright and poet who also went by the pen names Tatiana Morpurgo, Vania Morpurgo, Helga Greenberg, and Helga Monteverdi, died of heart failure on Friday at Albany Medical Center. She was 87.
Ms. Stanley, formerly of Sag Harbor, was born Helga Ida Morpurgo on April 3, 1935, in Rome. Her mother, Vilna Jorgen Morpurgo, was a Scandinavian-American countess and artist. Her father, Baron-Dr. Attilio Giacomo (Jack) Morpurgo, came from a multinational family of financiers who built the Suez Canal, and was a cardiologist and family doctor. The couple fled Europe with their two young daughters as Holocaust refugees and came to America in 1940.
The Morpurgos lived in Manhattan and later in Elmhurst, Queens, where Dr. Morpurgo had his medical practice. They eventually moved to Sag Harbor, where they first lived on Main Street, and in 1965 bought a three-story Victorian house on Union Street, behind the John Jermain Memorial Library, where Dr. Morpurgo had a medical practice and his wife ran the Sagg Harbour Arts Center.
Ms. Stanley graduated from the Manhattan School of Music and went on to study drama at Hunter College. She became a student protégée of the playwright Lillian Hellman, and later earned a national award for her playwriting, with Hellman’s sponsorship. In 1953 she married Stanley Greenberg, a high school music teacher. They divorced in 1975 and she moved to Hollywood to pursue playwriting. Following an earthquake in Los Angeles, she moved back to her family home in Sag Harbor, in the late 1980s.
In more recent years, she and her sister, Annselm L.N.V. Morpurgo, a playwright, poet, and performance artist also known as Artemis Smith, had lived in the Sag Harbor house, where Ms. Stanley continued to write plays and her sister spearheaded the Savant Garde Institute. They sold the family home in 2008.
Although the sisters often butted heads, “We never stopped loving each other and defending each other against the world,” Ms. Morpurgo said.
Ms. Stanley continued to write and produce plays in local theaters, and wrote freelance articles for local papers. She had also won numerous “best in show” prizes for her sculpted jewelry. She was a devoted animal activist and lifelong vegan who volunteered at local animal shelters.
“She was so sweet, kind, and beautiful,” said Eric Wald of Sag Harbor, publisher of The Waldo Tribune and a friend of Ms. Stanley’s for over 40 years. She had produced his play “Butterfly Man” at the Sag Harbor Inn and had also read his plays at Canio’s Books.
Debbie Tuma, another longtime friend and former Sag Harbor neighbor, described her as “probably the most generous, caring person I’ve ever met. She was always there to help any friend or animal in need.”
In 2011 she moved to Prescott, Ariz., for health reasons, and lived there until 2019, when she moved to Albany.
She is survived by her older sister and a cousin, Augusto Morpurgo of Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J.
A memorial service will be held at Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor on April 3, her birthday, at 2 p.m. Memorial donations have been suggested to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons at arfhamptons.org, or the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center at wildliferescuecenter.org.
