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July 13, 2007
A legendary soprano
Sills described as one of NYC's top attractions.
EUGENE KAELLIS
With the sad news of the death of Beverly Sills at the age of 78
last week, her admirers recalled elements of her life that remain
uplifting and inspiring: she was an earnest, hard-working and enormously
gifted performer who took her vocation seriously, yet retained her
sense of excitement and joy almost to the end of her life.
Sills – born Belle Miriam Silverman – became a "name"
in her profession when becoming an opera star was more demanding
than it had been in the days of Caruso, Ponselle, Chaliapin, Lehmann
and other luminaries. They performed in a period when opera singers
remained immobile on stage and rather expressionless as they belted
out major arias to audiences conditioned only to voice quality.
Sills had not only to be a great soprano, but an effective and moving
dramatic actor, as well. She famously succeeded in both when standards
had become more demanding, critics were tougher and North American
audiences were more sophisticated and experienced.
When her singing career was over, in 1979, in a highly unusual development,
she became a respected and valued opera administrator. As director
of the New York City Opera, a company that had given her the opportunity
to perform for 25 years, she was admired by her co-workers, administrators,
the board of directors and the public. When it came to talent, goodwill
and showbiz acumen, Sills had them all.
Her pictures invariably show her smiling. Her nickname, an accurate
reflection of her personality, was "Bubbles," allegedly
because she was born with a "bubble" in her mouth. It
was a sobriquet that stuck, because it continued to reflect her
personality.
Sills's career started very early. She performed on radio and, later,
on TV shows, from the age of three until she "retired"
at 12. Her parents, immigrants from Eastern Europe, were convinced
of her talent and potential and provided her with dance, voice and
elocution lessons. They also exposed her to all kinds of music.
For the next 10 years, she sang in Gilbert and Sullivan productions
and in occasional "light operas."
By the time Sills was seven, she had memorized 22 arias in phonetic
Italian. At Erasmus High School in Brooklyn – the same school
later attended by Barbra Streisand – Sills was voted "most
likely to succeed," possessing "the most personality"
and being the "prettiest."
At first, it seemed she would go into musical theatre. The well-known
Broadway producer J. J. Shubert started her in a series of exhausting
one-night stands with travelling troupes. Her father complained.
Singing was good, he agreed, but why did she have to wear fake eyelashes?
Her debut in grand opera was in 1947 with the Philadelphia Civic
Opera, as Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen. After her father died
in 1949, her life changed considerably. The loss of income meant
she had to make do, living in a tiny New York apartment when she
wasn't touring America in an opera company, singing Violetta in
La Traviata and Micaela in Carmen.
Sills's next big break came after repeated, undaunted effort. In
North America, appearing at New York's Metropolitan Opera is still
considered the pinnacle of the profession. Male voices, especially
tenors, are much in demand, because relatively few men look for
careers in opera or concert singing. But sopranos have to wait,
and often wait in vain. The competition is so keen that, if they
are to succeed, being cast has to become the obsession of their
lives. Sills auditioned eight times for the New York City Opera
and repeatedly failed to elicit an offer.
In 1956, she married Peter Greenough, a wealthy Cleveland newspaper
owner whom she had met while touring. She soon found herself living
a fantasy life, going from her tiny Manhattan apartment to a 25-room
mansion on the shores of Lake Erie – a house enlivened by two
small children from her husband's previous marriage. But tragedy
struck her ideal domestic life when both of the children she had
with Greenough turned out to have serious developmental problems.
As a consequence, Sills virtually retired from her profession to
provide special care for her two children. "I can't sing anymore,"
she told her manager, "I have too many other things on my mind."
With her husband's support, she gradually overcame the effects of
her unhappy experiences and went back to the opera stage. In 1966,
her self-confidence had returned to the point that she threatened
to quit the New York Opera Company if she couldn't sing the role
of Cleopatra in Handel's Julius Caesar, chosen for the opening
performance of the new Lincoln Centre Opera House in New York City.
The opera itself was an unusual choice. It was a baroque piece being
presented to an audience familiar almost exclusively with romantic
era operas: Verdi, Puccini and Wagner.
The manager acceded and had no regrets: Sills was a smash hit. Her
appearance in Caesar was the turning point of her career.
Thereafter, she was featured as a virtuoso with impressive acting
and stage abilities. Commenting on her great success, Sills made
a point of saying that she had "made it" in New York without
the usual "internship" in European companies. But her
first big role was as Pamira in Rossini's The Siege of Corinth,
staged at Milan's La Scala Opera, for which she earned a headline
in the city's daily, La Stampa, for bringing back the fluid
and exquisite bel canto style to Italian opera. She was referred
to as "La Fenomena," a prodigy of nature.
Her break in better-known grand operas came at the New York City
Opera, when she was acclaimed for roles in operas by Bellini and
Donizetti. As her career skyrocketed, she expanded her already large
repertoire to include the Queen of Shemakha in Rimsky-Korsakov's
La Coq d'Or, Manon in Massenet's opera of that name, the
title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lamermoor and in Puccini's
Suor Angelica and his trilogy, Il Trittico.
A critic for the New Yorker, a periodical rarely inclined
to overstatement, wrote in 1969, "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."
His words resonate in the hearts of millions of opera lovers who
heard her sing on stage, television and on her numerous recordings,
and those who had the privilege of seeing her in person.
Eugene Kaellis is a retired academic living in New Westminster.
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