Beverly Sills, All-American Diva, Is Dead at 78
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Published: July 3, 2007
Beverly Sills in 2002, after coming out of retirement as chairwoman of Lincoln Center to lead the Metropolitan Opera
Beverly Sills, the acclaimed Brooklyn-born coloratura soprano who was more popular with the American public than any opera singer since Enrico Caruso, even among people who never set foot in an opera house, died last night at her home in Manhattan. She was 78.
The cause was inoperable lung cancer, said her personal manager, Edgar Vincent.
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Times Topics: Beverly SillsAdditional articles about the former opera singer and audio and video clips of her performances.
Audio Clips of Beverly Sills performing:
Manon: ‘Un mot, s’il vous plait, Chevalier’ with the Ambrosian Opera Chorus and New Philharmonia Orchestra (mp3)
’The Ballad of Baby Doe:’ with Emerson Buckley and New York City Opera Orchestra (mp3)
Ms. Sills was America’s idea of a prima donna. Her plain-spoken manner and telegenic vitality made her a genuine celebrity and an invaluable advocate for the fine arts. Her life embodied an archetypal American story of humble origins, years of struggle, family tragedy and artistic triumph.
During her day, American opera singers routinely went overseas for training and professional opportunities. But Ms. Sills was a product of her native country and did not even perform in Europe until she was 36. At a time when opera singers regularly appeared as guests on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” Ms. Sills was the only opera star who was invited to be guest host. She made frequent television appearances with Carol Burnett, Danny Kaye and even the Muppets.
Indeed, while she was still singing, and before her 10-year tenure as general director of the New York City Opera, Ms. Sills for nearly two years was host of her own weekly talk show on network television. After leaving her City Opera post, she continued an influential career as an arts administrator, becoming the chairwoman first of Lincoln Center and then of the Metropolitan Opera.
During her performing career, with her combination of brilliant singing, ebullience and self-deprecating humor, Ms. Sills demystified opera — and the fine arts in general — in a way that a general public audience responded to. Asked about the ecstatic reception she received when she made a belated debut at La Scala in Milan in 1969, Ms. Sills told the press, “It’s probably because Italians like big women, big bosoms and big backsides.”
Along with Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, she was an acknowledged exponent of the bel canto Italian repertory during the period of its post-World War II revival. Though she essentially had a light soprano voice, her sound was robust and enveloping. In her prime her technique was exemplary. She could dispatch coloratura roulades and embellishments, capped by radiant high D’s and E-flat’s, with seemingly effortless agility. She sang with scrupulous musicianship, rhythmic incisiveness and a vivid sense of text.
Moreover, she brought unerring acting instincts to her portrayals of tragic leading roles in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “Anna Bolena,” Bellini’s “Puritani,” Massenet’s “Manon” and many other operas in her large repertory. And few singers matched her deadpan comic timing and physical nimbleness in lighter roles like Rosina in Rossini’s “Barbiere di Siviglia,” whom Ms. Sills portrayed as a ditsy yet determined young woman, and Marie, the tomboylike heroine raised by a military regiment in Donizetti’s “Fille du Régiment.”
In 1955 Ms. Sills joined the New York City Opera, which then performed in the City Center building on West 55th Street. Her loyal commitment to what at the time was an enterprising but second-tier company may have prevented her from achieving wider success earlier in her career. By the time Ms. Sills finally captured international attention, her voice had started to decline.
As early as 1970, reviews of her work were mixed. Harold C. Schonberg, then the chief music critic of The New York Times, fretted in his columns about Ms. Sills’s inconsistency. Yet reviewing her as Donizetti’s Lucia at the City Opera in early 1970, Mr. Schonberg wrote: “The amazing thing about her Lucia is not so much the way she sings it, though that has moments of incandescent beauty, but the way she manages to make a living, breathing creature of the unhappy girl.” He added that Ms. Sills “delivered by far the most believable mad scene I have ever seen in any opera house.”
That fall Mr. Schonberg’s quite negative review of Ms. Sills’s singing as Queen Elizabeth I in Donizetti’s “Roberto Devereux” was strongly countered by other critics, notably Alan Rich in New York magazine. Mr. Rich reported that he had left the performance “in a state of euphoria bordering on hysteria.” A magnificent opera, he added, had been “rescued from oblivion and accorded superb treatment.” It was an “extraordinary accomplishment” for Ms. Sills, he felt.
For the rest of her singing career, Ms. Sills elicited divergent reactions from critics. But the public, by and large, adored her. Though most of her fans knew that her struggle to the top had been long and tough, few realized just how long and how tough.
An Early Start
Beverly Sills was born Belle Silverman on May 25, 1929, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Her father, Morris, was an insurance broker whose family had emigrated from Bucharest, Romania. Her mother, Shirley, was born Sonia Markovna in the Russian city of Odessa. Ms. Sills was nicknamed Bubbles at birth because, her mother said, she emerged from the womb with bubbles in her mouth, and the name stuck.
Beverly Sills takes her final bows at the New York City Opera when she retired from the stage on Oct. 27, 1980.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Beverly Sills
Background information
Born
May 25, 1929, Brooklyn, New York
Died
July 2, 2007, New York, New York
Genre(s)
Opera, Classical Music
Occupation(s)
Opera singer; Arts administrator
Instrument(s)
Voice
Years active
Opera singer 1933-1980
Arts administrator 1979–2005
Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929 – July 2, 2007) was perhaps the best-known American opera singer in the 1960s and 1970s. She was famous for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in operas around the world and on recordings. After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera. Sills used her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects. At its 1981 commencement ceremonies, Barnard College awarded Sills its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction. She will be inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007.[1] She was also a recipient of the highly prestigious Kennedy Center Honors.
Sills underwent successful surgery for cancer in 1974,[2] but succumbed to an aggressive form of lung cancer on July 2, 2007.[3] She was 78 years old.
Life and career
Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, New York to Shirley Bahn (née Sonia Markovna), a musician, and Morris Silverman, an insurance broker.[4] Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Odessa and Bucharest, Romania.[5] She was raised in Brooklyn, where she was known, among friends, as “Bubbles” Silverman. As a child, she spoke Yiddish, Russian, Romanian, French and English.[6]
Early career
At the age of three, Sills won a “Miss Beautiful Baby” contest, in which she sang “The Wedding of Jack and Jill”. Beginning at age four, she performed professionally on the Saturday morning radio program, “Rainbow House,” as “Bubbles” Silverman. Sills began taking singing lessons with Estelle Liebling at the age of seven and a year later sang in the short film Uncle Sol Solves It (filmed August 1937, released June 1938 by Educational Pictures), by which time she had adopted her stage name, Beverly Sills. Liebling encouraged her to audition for CBS Radio’s Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour, and on October 26, 1939 at the age of 10, Sills was the winner of that week’s program. Bowes then asked her to appear on his Capital Family Hour, a weekly variety show. Her first appearance was on November 19, 1939, the 17th anniversary of the show, and she appeared frequently on the program thereafter.[7]
In 1945, Sills made her professional stage debut with a Gilbert and Sullivan touring company produced by Jacob J. Shubert. In her 1987 autobiography, she wrote, “The Shubert tour… was exhausting. In two months, we played Providence, Boston, Hartford, Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland, Madison and Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati…. We performed seven different G&S operettas: The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Gondoliers, Patience, Iolanthe, and Trial by Jury. Gilbert and Sullivan were gifted, funny writers, and I could always count on certain songs of theirs to bring down the house…. I played the title role in Patience, and I absolutely loved the character, because Patience is a very funny, flaky girl. My favorite line in the operetta occurs when someone comes up to her and says, “Tell me, girl, do you ever yearn?” And Patience replies, “I yearn my living.” I played her as a dumb Dora all the way through and really had fun with the role…. I made her into a bit of a klutz, as well. My Patience grew clumsier and clumsier with each performance, and audiences seemed to like her all the more for it. I certainly did. I found that I had a gift for slapstick humor, and it was fun to exercise it onstage.”[8] Sills sang operettas for several years.
In 1947, she made her operatic stage debut as the Spanish gypsy Frasquita in Bizet’s Carmen with the Philadelphia Civic Opera. She toured North America with the Charles Wagner Opera Company, in the fall of 1951 singing Violetta in La traviata and, in the fall of 1952, singing Micaëla in Carmen. On September 15, 1953, she made her debut with the San Francisco Opera as Helen of Troy in Boito’s Mefistofele and also sang Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni the same season. On October 29, 1955, she first appeared with the New York City Opera as Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus, which received critical praise. Her reputation expanded with her performance of the title role in the New York premiere of Douglas Stuart Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe in 1958.
On November 17, 1956, Sills married journalist Peter Greenough, of the Cleveland, Ohio newspaper The Plain Dealer and moved to Cleveland. She had two children with Greenough, Meredith (”Muffy”) in 1959 and Peter, Jr. (”Bucky”) in 1961. Muffy was profoundly deaf and Peter was severely mentally disabled. Sills restricted her performing schedule to care for her children.
In 1960, Sills and her family moved to Milton, Massachusetts, near Boston. In 1962, Sills sang the title role in Massenet’s Manon with the Opera Company of Boston, the first of many roles for opera director Sarah Caldwell. Manon continued to be one of Sills’ signature roles throughout most of her career. In January 1964, she sang her first Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute for Caldwell. Although Sills drew critical praise for her coloratura technique and for her performance, she was not fond of the latter role; she observed that she often passed the time between the two arias and the finale addressing holiday cards.
Peak singing years
In 1966, the New York City Opera revived Handel’s then virtually unknown opera seria Giulio Cesare (with Norman Treigle as Cæsar), and Sills’ performance as Cleopatra made her an international opera star. Sills also made her “unofficial” Met debut in its “Opera in the Parks” program as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, though nothing further came of this other than offers from Rudolf Bing for roles such as Flotow’s Martha. In subsequent seasons at the NYCO, Sills had great successes in the roles of the Queen of Shemakha in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Le coq d’or, the title role in Manon, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and the three female leads Suor Angelica, Giorgetta, and Lauretta in Puccini’s trilogy Il trittico. She also began to make recordings of her operas, first Giulio Cesare then Roberto Devereux, Lucia di Lammermoor, Manon, La traviata, Maria Stuarda, The Tales of Hoffmann (with Treigle), Anna Bolena, I puritani, Norma, The Siege of Corinth, Il barbiere di Siviglia, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Thaïs, Louise, Don Pasquale and Rigoletto.
Cover of Beverly Sills’ recordings of Donizetti’s three queens as ‘Anna Bolena’, ‘Maria Stuarda’, and Elizabeth I in ‘Roberto Devereux’.
During this period, she made her first television appearance as a talk-show personality on “Virginia Graham’s Girl Talk,” a weekday series syndicated by ABC Films. An opera fan who was Talent Coordinator for the series, persuaded the producer to put her on the air and she was a huge hit. Throughout the rest of her career she shone as a talk show host.
In 1969, Sills sang Zerbinetta in the American premiere (in Concert Version) of the 1912 version of Richard Strauss‘ Ariadne auf Naxos with the Boston Symphony. Her performance of the role, especially Zerbinetta’s aria, “Grossmächtige Prinzessin,” which she sang in the original higher key, won her acclaim. (The televised performance is now available on VAI.) The second major event of the year was her debut as Pamira in Rossini’s The Siege of Corinth at La Scala, a success that put her on the cover of Newsweek magazine. Her now high-profile career landed her on the cover of Time magazine in 1971, labeling her as “America’s Queen of Opera.” The title was appropriate because Sills had purposely limited her overseas engagements because of her family. Her major overseas appearances include debuts at London’s Covent Garden, Milan’s La Scala and in Naples, the Vienna State Opera, Lausanne in Switzerland, and concerts in Paris. In South America, she sang in the opera houses of Buenos Aires and Santiago, and appeared in several productions in Mexico City, including Lucia di Lammermoor with Luciano Pavarotti.
In April 1975 (following Sir Rudolf Bing’s departure as director), Sills made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in The Siege of Corinth, receiving an eighteen-minute ovation. Other operas she sang at the Met include La traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Thaïs, and Don Pasquale. Sills also continued to perform for New York City Opera, her home opera house, essaying new roles right up to her retirement, including the leading roles in Rossini’s Turk in Italy, Lehár’s Die lustige Witwe and Gian Carlo Menotti’s La loca, a role written especially for her. In a later interview Bing stated that his refusing to use Sills and preferring to exclusively use Italians such as Renata Tebaldi, due to the idea that American audiences expected to see Italian stars, was the single biggest mistake of his career.
In a 1997 interview, Sills said of Sir Rudolf, “Oh, Mr. Bing is an ass. [W]hile everybody said what a great administrator he was and a great this, Mr. Bing was just an improbable, impossible General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera…. The arrogance of that man.” [9]
Although Sills’ voice type was characterized as a “lyric coloratura,” she took on a number of heavier roles more associated with heavier voices as she grew older, including Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia and the same composer’s Tudor Queens, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux. She was admired in those roles for transcending the lightness of her voice with dramatic interpretation, although it may have come at a cost: Sills later commented that Roberto Devereux “shortened her career by at least four years.”
Sills was a frequent recitalist, especially in the final decade of her career. She sang in many mid-size cities and on numerous college concert series, bringing her art to many who might never see her on stage in a fully staged opera. She also sang concerts with a number of symphony orchestras. Sills was perhaps a more important force for popularizing opera than any other singer of her era through her many appearances on talk shows, including those with Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore. Sills even had her own talk show, “Lifestyles with Beverly Sills” on NBC. And in 1979 she appeared on The Muppet Show.
Later years and death
In 1978, Sills announced she would retire on October 27, 1980, in a farewell gala at the New York City Opera. In the spring of 1979, she began acting as co-director of NYCO, and became its sole general director as of the fall season of that year, a post she held until 1989, although she remained on the NYCO board until 1991. During her time as general director, Sills helped turn what was then a financially struggling opera company into a viable enterprise. She also devoted herself to various arts causes and such charities as the March of Dimes.
From 1994 to 2002, Sills was chairman of Lincoln Center. In October 2002, she agreed to serve as chairman of the Metropolitan Opera, for which she had been a board member since 1991. She resigned as Met chairman in January 2005, citing family as the main reason (she had finally had to place her husband, whom she had cared for over eight years, in a nursing home). She stayed long enough to supervise the appointment of Peter Gelb, formerly head of Sony Classical Records, as the Met’s General Manager, to succeed Joseph Volpe in August 2006.
Peter Greenough, Sills’ husband, died on September 6, 2006, at the age of 89.[10] They would have had their 50th wedding anniversary on November 17, 2006.
She co-hosted The View for Best Friends Week on November 9, 2006, as Barbara Walters’ best friend. She said that she doesn’t sing anymore, even in the shower, to preserve the memory of her voice.
She appeared publicly on the big screen during HD transmissions live from the Met, interviewed during intermissions by the host Margaret Juntwait on January 6, 2007 (I Puritani simulcast) and then, briefly, on April 28, 2007 (Il Trittico simulcast).
On June 28, 2007, the Associated Press and CNN reported that Sills, a non-smoker at the time, was hospitalized as “gravely ill,” from lung cancer. With her daughter at her bedside, Beverly Sills succumbed to cancer on July 2, 2007 at the age of 78.[11]
Recordings and broadcasts
During her operatic career, Sills recorded eighteen full-length operas. She also starred in eight opera productions televised on PBS and participated in such specials as A Look-in at the Met with Danny Kaye in 1975, Sills and Burnett at the Met, with Carol Burnett in 1976, and Profile in Music, which won an Emmy Award for its showing in the US in 1975, although it had been recorded in England in 1971.
For many years, Sills was the host of PBS broadcasts from Lincoln Center and was sought after for speaking engagements.
Further reading
- Sills, Beverly (1976). Bubbles: A Self-Portrait. ISBN 0-446-81520-9.
- Sills, Beverly (with Lawrence Linderman) (1987). Beverly: An Autobiography New York: Bantam Books.ISBN 0-553-05173-3. Includes a companion audio book, Beverly Sills: On My Own, ISBN 0-553-45743-8, with interviews, musical excerpts and a biographical narration.
- Paolucci, Bridget (1990). Beverly Sills. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.
- Sargeant, Withrop (1973). Divas. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan.
References
- ^ Official site: (www.limusichalloffame.org)
- ^ http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/28/sills.cancer.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest
- ^ http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/02/obit.beverly.sills.ap/index.html
- ^ http://www.filmreference.com/film/88/Beverly-Sills.html
- ^ http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/03/arts/03sills.php
- ^ http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/03/arts/03sills.php
- ^ The dates of the first Bowes appearances are incorrect in most printed sources about Sills.
- ^ Sills (1987) Beverly: An Autobiography, pp. 29-32
- ^ Strange Child of Chaos: Norman Treigle (pp. 176-177), by Brian Morgan, iUniverse, 2006.
- ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/obituaries/08greenough.html?ref=obituaries
- ^ http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2007/07/03/beverly_sills_peoples_diva_dies/
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Beverly Sills
- Beverly Sills, the All-American Diva, Is Dead at 78 New York Times, July 3, 2007
- Beverly Sills Online: tribute site with discography, bibliography, photo gallery, sound and video clips, timeline, press articles and other resources.
- Beverly Sills at All Music Guide
- Beverly Sills at Answers.com: collects information from several Inteernet sources.
- Beverly Sills:Special mother to the special children: summarizes Sills’ charitable work for disabled children.
- Beverly Sills at the Internet Movie Database: Filmography
- Beverly Sills: National Women’s Hall of Fame profile
- Beverly Sills at BrainyQuote: quotations
- Beverly Sills: Made in America (PBS Great Performances)
- Beverly Sills at OperaMom.com
- US Soprano Beverly Sills Dies, from efluxmedia.com
- NY Times five-page obituary, dated July 3, 2007
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