Sills, Beverly
Beverly Sills
Operatic soprano
She may have retired a decade ago, but Beverly Sills remains one of the most famous opera stars in America. A coloratura soprano of the first magnitude, bearing the characteristic light, agile voice marked by elaborate embellishment, Sills achieved international fame after a long apprenticeship with the New York City Opera and other companies. For slightly more than a decade the effervescent and gracious Sills thrilled opera audiences worldwide with her passionate interpretations of opera’s finest roles. New York magazine correspondent Peter G. Davis remembered that when Sills “reigned as America’s Queen of Opera,” her performances were distinguished by “her wonderful freshness, warmth, spontaneity, generosity of spirit, inner glow, and intuitive artistry.”
Beverly Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, New York, on May 25, 1929. Her parents were both immigrants from Eastern Europe. A nickname, “Bubbles,” stuck with her from birth because she was literally born with a bubble in her mouth. Sills was in fact a bubbly and attractive child who showed musical talent from an incredibly early age. She was only three when she sang a song to win the “Miss Beautiful Baby of 1932” contest in Brooklyn; by the age of six she was performing regularly on New York City’s WOR Radio.
Sills’s parents had a small collection of opera recordings and the budding diva memorized the arias in phonetic Italian before she was seven. Her mother decided to give her private lessons with Estelle Liebling, one of New York’s premier voice teachers. Liebling was impressed with the youngster’s innate ability and encouraged her to pursue more radio work. While most girls her age were skipping rope, Sills was busy in the radio studio, first as a member of the Major Bowes Capitol Family Hour and then as a principle in the musical soap opera Our Gal Sunday. Her first love was opera, however, so she “retired” from radio at the age of 12 to study her primary interest.
Almost immediately after finishing high school in 1945, Sills landed a position as a member of a Gilbert and Sullivan national touring company. Sills quickly assumed principal roles in the company’s operettas, including Countess Maritza and The Merry Widow, but the constant travel from city to city was exhausting. After less than two years she returned to New York and resumed her lessons with Liebling, determined to devote herself to grand opera.
Sills made her operatic debut with the Philadelphia Civic Opera in 1947, singing the part of Frasquita in Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Although she received good notices, she was not an overnight success, and soon found herself back in Manhattan, singing at clubs to make ends meet. In 1951 and 1952 she toured the
For the Record…
Born Belle Miriam Silverman, May 25, 1929, in Brooklyn, N.Y.; daughter of Morris (a life insurance broker) and Shirley (Bahn) Silverman; married Peter Buckeley Greenough (a newspaper publisher), November 17, 1956; children: Meredith, Peter Jr. Education: Studied voice privately under Estelle Liebling.
Coloratura soprano, 1945-80; director of New York City Opera, 1979-89. Made theatrical debut in autumn of 1945 with a Gilbert and Sullivan national touring company; took leads in operettas Rosemarie, Countess Maritza, and The Merry Widow. Made debut in grand opera with Philadelphia Civic Opera, February, 1947, as Frasquita in Carmen. Toured with Charles L. Wagner Opera Company, 1951-52. Joined New York City Opera, 1955, with debut October 29, 1955, as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus. Made debut with Metropolitan Opera, April 8, 1975, as Pamira in The Siege of Corinth. Has also toured the United States, Europe, and the Far East. Retired from singing in 1980. Has made numerous recordings of full operas and arias for RCA, Deutsche Grammophon, Angel, Columbia, ABC, and other labels.
Awards: Handel Medallion for achievement in the arts, 1974; Emmy Award, 1975; Pearl S. Buck Women’s Award, 1979; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1980. Holds numerous honorary degrees, including those from Temple University, New York University, New England Conservatory of Music, and Harvard University.
country again, this time with the Charles L. Wagner Opera Company. The pace was still rigorous—Sills sang Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata some 40 times and Micaela in Carmen more than 60 times in a single year. Her best notices from this period came for her San Francisco Opera performance as Helen of Troy in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele.
Sills’s greatest ambition was to sing with the New York City Opera; she auditioned for the company numerous times before finally earning a position in 1955. Her debut there, as Rosalinde in Johann Straus’s Die Fledermaus, was an unqualified success; critics agreed that she showed great promise. Soon after, Sills married wealthy Cleveland newspaperman Peter Buckeley Greenough. In 1958 she earned the best notices of her career for her performance as Baby in the New York premier of Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe.
Between 1958 and 1961 Sills commuted to New York from her homes in Cleveland and Boston in order to appear in a succession of important operas. She was forced to curtail her professional activities, however, when it became clear that her children—born in 1959 and 1961—had special needs that demanded her constant attention. Sills’s daughter Meredith was discovered to have progressive deafness; her son Peter Jr. was diagnosed as autistic. Anguished, Sills decided to devote all her time to her children and did not return to the stage until the mid-1960s.
When she did return, in a Boston production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, she discovered that her work helped ease the anxiety about her children. She came back to the New York City Opera in 1966, just in time to open the company’s new home in Lincoln Center with a performance as Cleopatra in George Frideric Handel’s Julius Caesar. The performance was Sills’s first major triumph; it assured her prima donna status with the company, but more importantly it endeared her to the demanding New York audiences.
By 1969 Sills had become one of the most important coloratura sopranos in the United States. New Yorker critic Winthrop Sargeant wrote of her: “If I were recommending the wonders of New York to a tourist, I would place Beverly Sills at the top of the list—way ahead of such things as the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.” Davis commented that Sills’s performances in a number of operas in the late 1960s “are among my most cherished operatic experiences. I imagine they are also fondly remembered by many other New York operagoers who felt that something precious vanished soon after the birth of Supersills.”
Sills was 40 when she reached opera’s pinnacle of success, and she pushed her voice to the limit in order to record and perform as often as her audience demanded. She was still at the top of her powers throughout the 1970s, and her enduring beauty and flair for theater brought throngs of new fans to classical opera. At her long overdue Metropolitan Opera debut in 1975 she was greeted with an eighteen-minute ovation. In Italy she was known as “La Fenomena” (the phenomenon) and “II Mostro” (the prodigy). Public television brought Sills into homes across America; she quickly achieved a height of fame exceedingly rare for stars of the stage—and almost unheard of for divas.
Davis noted, however, that age and a relentless professional pace began to take their toll on Sills’s vocal ability. “Sills’s depressing operatic performances during those final years of her career were worse than vocally disappointing,” the critic wrote. “They had degenerated into little more than mechanical personal appearances by a self-absorbed media heroine.” Sills herself was perfectionist enough to know that her work was suffering. In 1980 she retired from performing and accepted the challenge of running the company that had been her base for more than 20 years.
The task of managing the New York City Opera proved every bit as daunting as the most demanding vocal performance. When Sills took over in 1980 the company was five million dollars in debt. To make matters worse, the factory housing the company’s costumes burned down and critics panned key productions. Sills was nevertheless able to reverse the fortunes of the Opera, principally by charming funds from corporate donors. Sills also managed to increase attendance at the company’s productions by introducing supertitles—a screen with translations suspended over the stage. Today, wrote Kathleen Brady in Working Woman, “instead of being $5 million in the red, the company operates in the black with a $25 million budget and has eliminated the accumulated deficit.”
Sills gave up her professional responsibilities in 1989. She is now truly retired, living quietly with her husband of 35 years. She has received a number of prestigious honors, most notably the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon her by Jimmy Carter in 1980. She expresses no regrets about retiring, however. “I’ve done everything I set out to do,” she once said, “sung in every opera house I wanted to…. To go on past the point where I should, I think would break my heart. I think my voice has served me very well. I’d like to put it to bed so it would go quietly, with pride.”
Writings
Bubbles: A Self-Portrait, Bobbs-Merrill, 1976.
Beverly, Bantam, 1987.
Selected discography
Julius Caesar, RCA Victor.
The Ballad of Baby Doe, Deutsche Grammophon.
Bellini and Donizetti Heroines (arias), Westminster.
Manon, Angel.
Lucia di Lammermoor, Angel.
The Tales of Hoffmann, Angel.
I Puritani Angel.
The Art of Beverly Sills, Volume 1 (arias), Angel.
The Art of Beverly Sills, Volume 2 (arias), Angel.
A Beverly Sills Concert, Angel.
Scenes and Arias from French Opera, Angel.
Mad Scenes, Angel.
Welcome to Vienna, Angel.
Sources
Books
Current Biography Yearbook 1982, Wilson, 1983.
Sills, Beverly, Bubbles: A Self-Portrait, Bobbs-Merrill, 1976.
Sills, Beverly, Beverly, Bantam, 1987.
Periodicals
Esquire, September 1974.
High Fidelity, February 1969.
Life, January 17, 1969.
Newsweek, April 21, 1969; October 26, 1970; July 4, 1976;November 3, 1980.
New York, April 1, 1985; October 3, 1988.
New Yorker, March 1, 1969.
Opera News, September 19, 1970; April 19, 1975; October1980.
Time, November 22, 1971; April 7, 1975.
Working Woman, June 1987.
—Anne Janette Johnson
Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills (born 1929) was a child performer, coloratura soprano, and operatic superstar who retired from her performance career in 1980 to become general director of the New York City Opera Company and a prominent public figure.
Beverly Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, May 25, 1929, during the era of Shirley Temple and other child stars. Her father, son of a Romanian immigrant, was an insurance salesman who wanted his daughter to become a teacher. Her mother, however, had different plans for her daughter, nicknamed "Bubbles." Sills was on the radio by age three singing "The Wedding of Jack and Jill" and winning a Brooklyn contest for "the most beautiful baby of 1932." At the age of four she was a regular on a children's Saturday morning radio program; at seven she sang in a movie and had already memorized 22 arias from Galli-Curci recordings. By 1938 she was a weekly performer on "Major Bowes' Capitol Family Hour," and by the age of ten she was one of the principal actors on the radio program "Our Gal Sunday." She performed in an ad for Rinso White soap and appeared on an early, prophetic television program called "Stars of the Future." She left radio work at age 12, wanting to pursue her love of the Opera.
When she graduated from Public School 91 in Brooklyn, Beverly Sills was voted "Prettiest Girl," "Fashion Plate," "One with the Most Personality," and the "One Most Likely to Succeed." She graduated from the Professional Children's School in New York City and had learned 20 operatic roles by the time she was 15 and 50 to 60 operas by the age of 19. She studied voice privately with her lifelong associate Estelle Liebling and eventually achieved professional competence on the piano as well, studying with Paolo Gallico.
Billed as "the youngest prima donna in captivity," Sills joined a Gilbert and Sullivan touring company in 1945. Two years later she sang her first operatic role, Frasquita in Carmen, with the Philadelphia Opera Company. In 1948 she toured college towns with a choir known as the Estelle Liebling Singers. In 1951 and 1952 she toured with the Charles L. Wagner Opera Company in the roles of Violetta in La Traviata and Micaela in Carmen. In 1953 Sills performed the title role in Manon with the Baltimore Opera and, with the San Francisco Opera, performed Elena in Boïto's Mefistofele, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, and Gerhilde in Die Walküre.
Sills made her debut with the New York City Opera on October 29, 1955, singing Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus. The critics loved her and predicted great success for her career. Later in the season she sang Oxana in Tchaikovsky's The Golden Slippers. Eventually she would command a vast repertoire of 100 roles, actively performing 60 of them in 100 opera or concert appearances each year at the peak of her career. Sills' great memory allowed her not only to master her own enormous repertoire of roles but to grasp the other principal roles in the operas she knew as well. This accounts, in part, for her equal reputation as an actress as well as a specialist in the bel canto style of singing associated with both Sills and her Australian-born contemporary Joan Sutherland.
In 1956 Sills married Peter Bulkeley Greenough, associate editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a newspaper his family partially owned. She and her husband had two children but, unfortunately, one was born hearing impaired and the other developmentally disabled. Her disabled daughter required great care, and her developmentally disabled son had to be institutionalized when he was six. Beverly Sills carried two watches, one set to her son's schedule in the time zone where he lived, so that she could always know what he was doing. These tragedies would lead Sills into philanthropic work later in her career.
In addition to the bel canto repertoire, Sills performed modern American operas, including The Ballad of Baby Doe by Douglas Moore. She performed avant garde works such as Hugo Weisgall's opera, Six Characters in Search of an Author, in 1959 and, in 1965, the American premiere of Intolleranza 1960, by Luigi Nono. In 1963 she managed to perform all three roles in Puccini's trilogy of one act operas, Il Trittico. On July 8, 1966, she sang Donna Anna in Don Giovanni with the Metropolitan Opera, although her formal debut with the Metropolitan Opera did not actually occur until 1975, a fact which led to the growth and popularity of a number of small opera companies in America.
Another historic departure associated with Sills was her delayed appearance in the European opera capitals. Sills was able to rise to the top of her profession before touring Europe. She finally did so in 1967, a guest of the Vienna State Opera, and sang in Buenos Aires that year as well. In 1969 she sang Pamira in Rossini's Le Siège de Corinth and the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor at La Scala in Milan. She repeated her Lucia at Covent Garden, London, late that same year and went on to sing Violetta in Naples and at the Deutsche Opera in Berlin in January of 1970 and Constanza in The Abduction from the Seraglio in Israel in 1971, in addition to a recital in Paris that same year.
Sills became an operatic superstar in the fall of 1966 with the overwhelming success of her performance of Cleopatra in Handel's Julius Caesar at the Lincoln Center in New York City. The recording of this role, released in 1967, is among her many highly valued records. Sills' own favorite role was Elizabeth I in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux, which resulted in her being the subject of a TIME magazine cover story in 1971.
On October 27, 1980, Sills gave her last performance, one which the opera critics said was overdue as her voice had been deteriorating for some time. The very next day she assumed the general directorship of the New York City Opera. She displayed great administrative skill and public relations talent, appearing on popular television programs and in other ways representing opera to a wide, general audience and helping to pull the Opera out of both financial and public crisis. She is the author of three autobiographies which have enjoyed a large readership. She received honorary doctoral degrees from Harvard, New York University, Temple University, the New England Conservatory, and the California Institute of the Arts. In 1973 she was given the Handel Medallion, New York City's highest cultural award. Sills added philanthropy to her list of careers, and, in 1972, she was the national chairman of the Mothers' March on Birth Defects. She continued to be a highly visible, greatly active public figure in promoting opera and philanthropic causes well into the 1980s.
In 1989, Sills formally retired and remained in quiet seclusion with her husband for about five years. In 1994, she returned to public life as the chairwoman of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. At this point in her life, Sills says "I've done everything I set out to do … sung in every opera house I wanted to … to go on past the point where I should, I think would break my heart. I think my voice has served me very well."
Further Reading
For additional information, see Beverly Sills' three autobiographies: Beverly, an Autobiography (1987), written with Lawrence Linderman; Bubbles: A Self Portrait (1976); Bubbles: an Encore (1981). Articles on Beverly Sills appear in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980) and in Baker's Biographical Dictionary (1978). She is also dealt with in W. Sargent Divas (1973), J. B. Steane The Grand Tradition (1974), and J. Hine Great Singers on Great Singing (1982). As a performer and a public figure, Beverly Sills is extensively treated in the periodical literature. Of particular interest is the TIME cover story of November 22, 1971. A selective list of other articles follows: Opera News (February 11, 1967); New York Times Magazine (September 17, 1967); Newsweek (April 8, 1968, and April 21, 1969); Opera News (September 19, 1970); J. Barthel: "Bel canto Beverly: at 46, a Superstar Makes Her Debut at the Met," New York Times Magazine (April 6, 1975); TIME (April 7, 1975); and D. Henahan: "A Tough New Role for Beverly," New York Times Magazine (September 23, 1979). □
Sills, Beverly
SILLS, Beverly
(b. 25 May 1929 in New York City), American operatic coloratura soprano, television host, and arts administrator.
Sills, born Belle Miriam Silverman, was the only daughter of three children born to Morris Silverman, an agent for Metropolitan Life Insurance, and Shirley Bahn Silverman, a musician and homemaker. Born with a bubble of saliva in her mouth, the obstetrician dubbed her "Bubbles" and the nickname stuck. Sills began her career in radio at the age of three, singing on a children's show called Uncle Bob's Rainbow House (1932). In 1936 she auditioned for Estelle Liebling, a scholar of early Romantic operas, labeled by the press as the best vocal coach of the time. Liebling described Sills as the "first 7-year old with a trill," and took her on for abbreviated lessons. Liebling remained Sills's only vocal coach until Liebling's death in 1970. Sometime after the audition, Sills appeared on Major Bowes' Capitol Family Hour, a show that spawned a number of talents in early television, and she later received a permanent spot on his weekly program. She retired at the age of twelve to concentrate on schooling and graduated from the Professional Children's School in 1945.
Sills was engaged in a series of musical theater roles and then took parts with lesser companies. She made her operatic debut with the Philadelphia Civic Opera in 1947 as Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen. She also toured as Violetta in La Traviata (1951), singing the role more than fifty times while traveling from city to city in a bus; she endured a similarly grueling touring schedule the next year, performing as Micaela in Carmen more than sixty times.
Sills began her long association with the New York City Opera on 29 October 1955, singing Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus. By 1958 she was important enough to the company to be given the title role in the New York premier of Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe. On 17 November 1956 Sills married Peter B. Greenough, the associate editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She became stepmother to Greenough's three children and later gave birth to a daughter, who was born with a serious hearing impairment and who now has multiple sclerosis, and to a son, who has autism.
These family problems prompted Sills to retire briefly from the stage; she told New York City Opera director Julius Rudel she was too distracted to sing. Sills's strength as a singer was not so much her voice quality as her acting ability. She appeared at the end of the era of the big singer who would stride to the front of the stage and belt out the aria. Sills, who had been a singing cowgirl in a radio soap opera in her youth, had also learned to act. She studied her voice roles like a method actor reading history books to assimilate a character. She would carefully study the libretto and could converse well in French.
With these strengths in mind, Rudel, perhaps the most effective opera administrator of his time, coaxed Sills out of retirement. She did not like her first new role—Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute. In February 1964 Sills first performed The Tales of Hoffman, in which she appeared in all three soprano roles. Later that year she debuted as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, a role also performed by both of her great rivals of the period—Birgrit Nilsson and Joan Sutherland.
October 1966 saw the New York opening of two new opera houses at Lincoln Center, on the West Side of New York. The Metropolitan Opera Company (the Met) acquired its own building, replacing an antiquated one located further downtown, while Rudel's City Opera had shared the New York State Theater with the ballet. Lincoln Center was the City Opera's first permanent home. A more intense (if mostly friendly) rivalry could scarcely be imagined. The Met chose to open with the world premier of Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra. Leontyne Price played the role of Cleopatra, thus smashing the Met's color barrier. Rudel mirrored the Met's choice with the odd selection of Handel's period opera Julius Caesar. Sills told Rudel, "If I don't get the Cleopatra, I will resign," but she was awarded the role.
In the battle of the debuts, City Opera won. Barber's piece was considered too avant-garde, and it suffered from opening night technical horrors, such as a breakdown of the new mechanical stage. By contrast Sills, who is not reticent, called the City opening, "One of the great performances of all time in the opera house."
In 1968 Sills introduced perhaps her finest role—the title role in Manon. Sills liked the role because the changes take place "on the stage, not between scenes … I can develop Manon in full view of the audience." The next year saw Sills in the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor, the first of her great bel canto performances. The Saturday Review critic Irving Kolodin had some problems with Sills's approach, but "she put together some choice examples of almost any kind of technical discipline one could think of [including] high notes up to E-flat." Kolodin complained, however, that Sills engaged more in action than acting.
In the 1970s Sills went on to explore further Donizetti and Bellini roles, studying Elizabeth in Roberto Devereaux and Mary Stuart in Donizetti's opera of the same name. She went on to sing at the Met (ending a long feud), La Scala, and at Covent Garden. She announced her retirement from singing during a nationally televised concert in 1980, and assumed administrative roles with City Opera, the Met, and the Lincoln Center. She remains a spokes-person for the hearing impaired and mentally challenged, serving as a national chairperson for the March of Dimes "Mothers March" on Birth Defects. Sills also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980 from President Jimmy Carter.
Sills was not quite as commanding on an international level as the Wagner specialist Birgit Nilsson or Joan Sutherland, who sang a similar repertoire, but during the 1960s she represented not only the best in American operatic performance, but also the hope of an American cultural ascendancy in classical European music.
Sills has written three autobiographies: Bubbles: A Self-Portrait (1976), Bubbles: An Encore (1981), and Beverly: An Autobiography (1987), written with Lawrence Linderman. A biography is Bridget Paolucci, Beverly Sills: Opera Singer (1990). Martin Mayer, The Met: One Hundred Years of Grand Opera (1983), describes Sills's controversial relationship with the Metropolitan Opera. Periodical citations include "Beverly Sills," Opera (Dec. 1970), and the cover story of Time (22 Nov. 1971).
John David Healy
Sills, Beverly
Beverly Sills
Born: May 25, 1929
Brooklyn, New York
American singer
Beverly Sills was a child performer, coloratura soprano (a light voice used in a very ornate type of singing), and operatic (in operas) superstar who retired from her performance career in 1980 to become general director of the New York City Opera Company.
Early years
Beverly Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, New York, on May 25, 1929, during the era of Shirley Temple (1928–) and other child stars of the movies. Her father was an insurance salesman who wanted his daughter to become a teacher. Her mother had different plans, however. Sills was singing on the radio by age three. At the age of four she was a regular on a children's Saturday morning radio program. At seven she sang in a movie and had already memorized twenty-two opera arias (solos). She continued to perform on radio shows and did laundry soap commercials, which got her the nickname "Bubbles." She left radio work at age twelve to pursue her love of opera.
After Sills graduated from grammar school she attended the Professional Children's School in New York City. By the time she was nineteen she had memorized between fifty and sixty operas. She studied voice privately with her lifelong associate Estelle Liebling and eventually achieved professional competence on the piano as well, studying with Paolo Gallico.
Billed as "the youngest prima donna in captivity," Sills joined a Gilbert and Sullivan touring company in 1945. Two years later she sang her first operatic role with the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Opera Company. She toured with several different small opera companies starting in 1948.
Sills made her debut with the New York City Opera on October 29, 1955, singing Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus. The critics loved her and predicted great success for her career. Eventually she would command a vast repertoire of one hundred roles, actively performing sixty of them in one hundred opera or concert appearances each year at the peak of her career. Her great memory allowed her not only to master her own enormous repertoire of roles but also to understand the other principal roles in the operas she performed. This ability earned her a reputation not only as a singer on the stage but as an actress as well.
Family life
In 1956 Sills married Peter Bulkeley Greenough, associate editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She and her husband had two children. Their daughter was born hearing impaired and their son was developmentally disabled. Their son had to be institutionalized (put in a hospital) when he was six due to the great amount of care he required. Sills carried two watches, one set to her son's schedule in the time zone where he lived, so that she could always know what he was doing. The tragedies with her children would lead Sills into philanthropic (helping others through work and donations) work later in her career.
Metropolitan Opera and Europe
On July 8, 1966, Sills sang Donna Anna in Don Giovanni with the Metropolitan Opera, but her formal debut with the Metropolitan Opera did not actually occur until 1975. Sills was able to rise to the top of her profession before touring Europe. She finally did so in 1967, a guest of the Vienna State Opera. She went on to sing in Buenos Aires, Argentina; La Scala in Milan, Italy; and Covent Garden, London, England. She also performed in Naples, Italy; Berlin, Germany; and Paris, France.
On October 27, 1980, Sills gave her last performance. Opera critics said it was overdue, as her voice had been deteriorating (weakening) for some time due, in part, to health problems. The very next day she assumed the general directorship of the New York City Opera. She displayed great management skill and public relations talent, appearing on popular television programs and in other ways representing opera to a wide audience. She helped pull the New York City Opera out of both financial and public crises.
Sills wrote three autobiographies. She received honorary doctoral degrees from Harvard University, New York University, Temple University, the New England Conservatory, and the California Institute of the Arts. In 1973 she was awarded the Handel Medallion, New York City's highest cultural award.
In 1972 Sills added philanthropy to her list of careers, becoming the national chairman of the Mothers' March on Birth Defects. She continues to be a highly visible active public figure, promoting both operatic and philanthropic causes.
Retirement
In 1989 Sills formally retired and remained in quiet seclusion with her husband for about five years. In 1994 she returned to public life as the chairwoman of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. At this point in her life Sills says "I've done everything I set out to do … sung in every opera house I wanted to … to go on past the point where I should, I think would break my heart. I think my voice has served me very well."
For More Information
Paolucci, Bridget. Beverly Sills. New York: Chelsea House, 1990.
Sills, Beverly. Bubbles: An Encore. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1981.
Sills, Beverly, and Lawrence Linderman. Beverly, an Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.
Sills, Beverly
SILLS, BEVERLY
SILLS, BEVERLY (née Belle Silverman ; 1929– ), U.S. soprano singer. Born in New York City, Sills made her first public appearance as "Bubbles," becoming a child radio star at the age of three; at six she was singing coloratura soprano arias on "Major Bowes' Capital Family Hour." Giving up radio at the age of 12, she began piano lessons with Paolo Gallico and studied singing with Estelle Liebling (the teacher of Galli-Curci). She made her début in opera in 1947 with the Philadelphia Civic Opera (Micaëla in Carmen). After joining the New York City Opera Company in 1955, she first sang the part of Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus; among many other parts, she created the title role in Carlisle Floyd's The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956). In 1961, she retired to care for her deaf child, but in 1965 was persuaded by Julius *Rudel, director of the company, to return to the stage in Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann in which she sang all three soprano roles. In 1966, during the opening season at the Company's new Lincoln Center opera house, she was a much-praised Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare; and her playing the title role in Massenet's Manon in 1968 led several critics to hail her performance, as well as the entire production, as the best in New York since World War ii. Sills appeared at most of the major American and world opera houses, including the Vienna State Opera (1967); the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, in Rossini's seldom performed L'Assedio di Corinto (1969); the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in Lucia di Lammermoor (1970); and the Teatro la Fenice, Venice, as Violetta in La Traviata (1972). In all these roles, audiences admired her coloratura technique if not always a perfect steadiness or sweetness of voice, and she was an excellent actress with a warm stage personality. Sills announced that she would retire from opera on attaining the age of 50, and after fulfilling an assignment to sing at the world premiere of Menotti's Juana La Loca in San Diego in May 1978, she was appointed general director of the New York City Opera (1979–89). In June 1980 she was awarded the Freedom Medal by President Carter and in October that year gave her farewell performance. Sills published an autobiography (1987) and became chairperson of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (1993).
add. bibliography:
ng2.
[Max Loppert /
Amnon Shiloah (2nd ed.)]