Beverly Sills, 1929-2007

The great American operatic soprano Beverly Sills has died:

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 Monday night at her home in Manhattan. She was 78.

The cause was inoperable lung cancer, said her personal manager, Edgar Vincent.

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.

At a time when American opera singers routinely went overseas for training and professional opportunities, 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, after she retired from singing, following her 10-year tenure as general director of the New York City Opera, Ms. Sills was briefly host of her own 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.”

Her obituary in the Arts section of the NYT (cited above) is mammoth, going on for four sections. That’s appropriate. She was a vital part of the fabric of the city of New York for three quarters of a century, practically from babyhood.

I won’t attempt to catalogue her life, extol her voice, or praise her accomplishments. That is being done more ably by others. Kid from Brooklyn, radio prodigy, operatic soprano, arts advocate, manager, wife, mother, American hero. We are poorer that she has passed from our midst; richer that she was here at all. A truly remarkable voice. A truly remarkable character. A truly remarkable life.

Washington Post

Known to fans as the antithesis of the temperamental or self-centered diva, Sills was a wife and mother who coped with the illnesses and disabilities of her son and daughter and more recently with the illness of her husband, Peter Greenough, who died last year. His family had once owned the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and he had been an editor there when they met.

By no means could her great successes banish the shadows from her life. In recognition of the tragedies she knew, she told intimates that “happy I’ll never be, cheerful I’ll always try to be.”

Chicago Tribune

Somehow, only the critics really cared that her bright, agile, technically secure soprano lacked dramatic weight and, near the end of her singing career, would turn shrill and wobbly under pressure. When she switched on that famous smile and quick wit, in opera, concerts and many appearances on television shows such as Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” and “The Carol Burnett Show.” Sills lived up to her childhood nickname of Bubbles. She could do no wrong.

Although celebrated elsewhere, she never sang with Lyric Opera of Chicago. When someone asked Carol Fox, the company’s indomitable general manager during Sills’ heyday, why she never engaged her, Fox haughtily replied, “Why should I get Sills when I can get Joan Sutherland?”

Sills did, however, perform on numerous occasions with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, notably in a series of concert opera performances conducted by James Levine at Ravinia during the early 1970s. There she sang the title roles in Verdi’s “La Traviata,” Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” and Bellini’s “Norma,” along with Konstanze in Mozart’s “Abduction from the Seraglio.” The soprano often praised the intimate festival atmosphere and found singing there “a joy,” she said.

Los Angeles Times

Singing, in fact, was only the first, if longest, part of her career. After she retired from the stage at 50, she spent a decade as an exceptionally capable administrator of New York City Opera, turning around the financially beleaguered company that gave her a career and to which she remained faithful as her reputation soared. Later, she assumed the volunteer post of chairman of Lincoln Center in New York City, which she held from 1994 to 2002, and then accepted the volunteer post of chairman of the Metropolitan Opera. In both positions, she proved a master fundraiser.

Spurred by the births of a daughter who was deaf and a son who was mentally disabled, Sills also served for many years as chair of the board of the March of Dimes Foundation and national chairwoman of the organization’s Mothers’ March on Birth Defects.

San Francisco Chronicle

But her success as an operatic celebrity was only partly attributable to her musical skills. She also cultivated a folksy, plainspoken demeanor that helped her create a distinctly American public persona as what music critic Peter G. Davis has called a “populist prima donna.”

At a time when operatic luminaries had an increasingly difficult time capturing the public imagination, Ms. Sills — a brash New Yorker widely known by her childhood nickname, “Bubbles” — seemed to embody the approachable face of the fine arts.

[…]

“She was so down-to-earth, so approachable and so human,” said San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley. “And because she was a star, she brought people who had no interest in opera into the opera. They loved Beverly the personality, and so they wanted to see Beverly the singer.”