[Deathwatch] Beverly Sills, opera diva, 78

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Opera star Beverly Sills dies at 78

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/02/obit.beverly.sills.ap/index
.html

 NEW YORK (AP)	-- Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera diva who was
a global icon of can-do American culture with her dazzling voice,
bubbly personality and management moxie in the arts world, died Monday
of cancer, her manager said. She was 78.

It had been revealed just last month that Sills was gravely ill with
inoperable lung cancer. Sills, who never smoked, died about 9 p.m.
Monday at her Manhattan home with her family and doctor at her side,
said her manager, Edgar Vincent.

Beyond the music world, Sills gained fans worldwide with a style that
matched her childhood nickname, Bubbles. The relaxed, red-haired diva
appeared frequently on "The Tonight Show," "The Muppet Show" and in
televised performances with her friend Carol Burnett.

Together, they did a show from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera
called "Sills and Burnett at the Met," singing rip-roaring duets with
funny one-liners thrown in. Photo Take a look at Sill's career through
the years »

Long after the public stopped hearing her sing in 1980, Sills' rich,
infectious laughter filled the nation's living rooms as she hosted live
TV broadcasts. As recently as last season, she conducted backstage
interviews for the Metropolitan Opera's high-definition movie theater
performances.

Sills first gained fame with a high-octane career that helped put
Americans on the international map of opera stars.

Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, she quickly became Bubbles, an
endearment coined by the doctor who delivered her, noting that she was
born blowing a bubble of spit from her little mouth.

Fast-forward to 1947, when the same mouth produced vocal glory for her
operatic stage debut in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a bit role in
Bizet's "Carmen." Sills became a star with the New York City Opera,
where she first performed in 1955 in Johann Strauss Jr.'s "Die
Fledermaus." She was acclaimed for performances in such operas as
Douglas Moore's "The Ballad of Baby Doe," Massenet's "Manon" and
Handel's "Giulio Cesare," and the roles of three Tudor queens in works
by Gaetano Donizetti.

Her 1958 appearances as Baby Doe would become among her best known, in
a tale of a silver-mine millionaire who leaves his wife for Baby Doe
and eventually dies penniless.

"I loved the role," Sills wrote in her 1976 autobiography. "I read
everything that had ever been written about her. ... I absorbed her so
completely in those five weeks of studying the opera that I knew her
inside and out. I was Baby Doe."

Sills' face once graced the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines as an
American who had conquered the classical music world, even abroad -- at
the time a rarity.

But as a child star, she was not above singing radio commercials with
lyrics such as: "Rinso White, Rinso Bright, happy little washday song."


It was not until late in her career that she achieved the pinnacle,
appearing at the Met, the nation's premier opera house.

Her debut on that stage didn't come until 1975, years after she became
famous. In her memoir, she said longtime Met general manager Rudolf
Bing "had a thing about American singers, especially those who had not
been trained abroad: He did not think very much of them."

Sills' Met debut, arranged after Bing retired, was in "The Siege of
Corinth," and she recalled that "I was welcomed at the Met like a
long-lost child." (She also recalled having a couple of friendly
encounters with Bing and found he "could not have been more charming.")


Described by former Mayor Ed Koch as "an empire unto herself," Sills
sat on several corporate boards, including those of Macy's and American
Express.

Sills retired from the stage in 1980 at age 51 after a three-decade
singing career and began a new life as an executive and leader of New
York's performing arts community. First, she became general director of
the New York City Opera.

Under her stewardship, the City Opera, known as the "people's opera
company," became the first in the nation to use English supertitles,
translating operas for the audience by projecting lyrics onto a screen
above the stage. The Met followed, later adopting its titles on the
back of audience seats.

In 1994, Sills became chairwoman of the Lincoln Center for the
Performing Arts. She was the first woman and first former artist in
that position.

After leading the nation's largest arts complex through eight boom
years and launching a redevelopment project, she retired in 2002,
saying she wanted "to smell the flowers a little bit."

After six months, she was back.

"So I smelled the roses and developed an allergy," she joked as she
accepted a position as chairwoman of the Met. "I need new mountains to
climb, which is why roses don't appeal to me."

In a 2000 interview, she said, "It was never part of my plan to retire
as a prima donna. I never thought the day I stopped singing would be
the day I stopped working."

Sills was a master fundraiser, tapping her vast network of friends and
colleagues for money that bolstered not only Lincoln Center but also
non-artistic causes such as the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the
March of Dimes, a job she called "one of the most rewarding in my
life."

The word around New York was that if anyone needed to raise several
million dollars in one night, they could turn to Sills, whose name drew
donors in droves.

She also lent her name and voice to the Multiple Sclerosis Society; her
daughter, Muffy, has MS and was born deaf.

At a 2005 Manhattan benefit for the National Multiple Sclerosis
Society, Sills told an audience that included her daughter: "One of the
things that separates the two-legged creatures from the four-legged
ones is compassion."

Added the host for that evening, Barbara Walters: "She can go from
doing a duet with Placido Domingo to doing a duet with a Muppet."

Sills' compassion extended to her autistic son and to her husband, who
lived with her at their home as his Alzheimer's disease progressed.

Still, through harrowing personal times, she never lost her own sense
of humor, accompanied by a billowing ripple of laughter that was all
the more warming because it was born not of frivolity but of a
survivor's grit.

She spoke like she sang -- with bravado. The words poured out of her
like a force of nature, sprinkled with good-natured gossip and
insights, cheeky jokes and probing questions.

She balanced the challenges of her private life with the joy of
singing, stepping onstage and transforming herself into characters that
made her forget her troubles.

Stage fright was foreign to her. Before curtain time, she would make
phone calls or munch on an apple, then sweep on to deliver her roles
with exuberance.

A coloratura soprano, Sills was for years the prima donna of the New
York City Opera, achieving stardom with critically acclaimed
performances in Verdi's "La Traviata" and Donizetti's "Lucia di
Lammermoor," among dozens of roles.

She is credited with reviving musical styles that had gathered dust,
such as the Three Queens -- the trio of heroines of Gaetano Donizetti's
"Anna Bolena," "Maria Stuarda" and "Roberto Devereaux" -- in which she
starred as Elizabeth, a role she called her greatest artistic
achievement.

Onstage, her style stressed the theatrical portrayal of the character,
as well as the music.

"Opera is music AND drama," she wrote in her 1976 memoir, "Bubbles: A
Self-Portrait." "I'm prepared to sacrifice the beautiful note for the
meaningful sound any time. ... I can make a pretty tone as well as
anyone, but there are times when the drama of a scene demands the
opposite of a pretty sound."

As chairwoman of the Met, she was instrumental in proposing Peter Gelb,
now general manager, for that position, a move that brought a new
leader who injected a dose of new moves that pushed up attendance and
ticket sales.

Citing personal reasons, Sills bowed out as Metropolitan Opera
chairwoman in January 2005, saying, "I know that I have achieved what I
set out to do." At the time, she had recently suffered a fall and was
using a wheelchair.

In 2006, she presided over the inaugural Beverly Sills Artist Award at
the Met, given to baritone Nathan Gunn.

Sills grew up in a "typical middle-class American Jewish family," as
she put it. She was first exposed to opera by listening to her mother's
record collection.

She began taking weekly voice, dance and elocution lessons as a young
child and at age 4 appeared on a local radio show called "Uncle Bob's
Rainbow Hour."

When she was 7, her name was changed to Beverly Sills -- a friend of
her mother's thought it was a more suitable stage name -- and she began
34 years of study with vocal coach Estelle Liebling.

After an audition arranged by Liebling, the young Sills won first place
in the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour" and became a regular member of its
"Capitol Family Hour show." As a teenager, Sills made two repertory
tours and finished high school by correspondence course at Manhattan's
Professional Children's School.

Primped up in big bows and crisp pink dresses by her mother, she set
off to sing on the radio, at ladies' luncheons and at bar mitzvahs. At
16, billed as "the youngest prima donna in captivity," she joined the
touring J.J. Shubert operetta company, starring in Gilbert and Sullivan
productions.

Her opera debut came in 1947, in the role of Frasquita in "Carmen" with
the Philadelphia Civic Opera. For several years, Sills sang opera when
she could, touring twice with the Wagner Company, while performing in
the Catskills and at a Manhattan after-hours club.

She sang briefly with the San Francisco Opera Company, making her debut
there in 1953 in a secondary role in Boito's "Mefistofele." In 1954,
she sang the role of Verdi's Aida in Salt Lake City before joining the
New York City Opera in 1955.

In 1956, Sills married Peter Greenough, a journalist who later quit the
news business to manage the family's affairs as his wife's career
flourished. He died in 2006.

After a whirlwind of performances in the early 1960s, Sills hit her
stride as Cleopatra in Handel's "Julius Caesar" in 1966, when the New
York City Opera officially opened its new home at Lincoln Center.

"When the performance was over, I knew that something extraordinary had
taken place," Sills wrote. "I knew that I had sung as I had never sung
before, and I needed no newspapers the next day to reassure me."

Abroad, Sills sang at such famed opera houses as La Scala and Teatro
San Carlo in Italy, London's Royal Opera at Covent Garden and the
Berlin Opera.

Besides Greenough's three children from a previous marriage, the couple
had two children of their own, Peter Jr., known as "Bucky", and
Meredith, known as "Muffy."

Many thanks to TheLenGuy for posting this obituary