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Beverly Sills

Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929 – July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s.

Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was especially renowned for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, and most notably Elisabetta in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux.


The New York Times noted,


NPR said her voice was "Capable of spinning a seemingly endless legato line, or bursting with crystalline perfection into waves of dazzling fioriture and thrilling high notes."[2]


After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the chairwoman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.

Voice[edit]

Sills's voice has been variously described as "rich, supple", "silvery", "precise, a little light", "multicolored", "robust and enveloping", with "a cutting edge that can slice through the largest orchestra and chorus", soaring easily above high C.[1][18][19] Her technique and musicianship have been much praised. Conductor Thomas Schippers said in a 1971 interview with Time that she had "the fastest voice alive".[18] The New York Times writes that "she could dispatch coloratura roulade (music) and embellishments, capped with radiant high Ds and E-flats, with seemingly effortless agility. She sang with scrupulous musicianship, rhythmic incisiveness and a vivid sense of text."[1] Soprano Leontyne Price was "flabbergasted at how many millions of things she can do with a written scale."[18] Her vocal range, in performance, extended from F3 to F6, and she said she could sometimes hit a G6 in warm up.

Grammy Award

[21]

Emmy Award

Delta Omicron

Presidential Medal of Freedom

Sills received many honors and awards from the 1970s through her final years. Here is a list of her major awards, divided by category:


Sills was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.[27]

The Ballad of Baby Doe (Bible, Cassel; Buckley, 1959)

Giulio Cesare (Wolff, Forrester, Treigle; Rudel, 1967)

Roberto Devereux (Wolff, Ilosfalvy, Glossop; Mackerras, 1969)

Lucia di Lammermoor (Bergonzi, Cappuccilli, Díaz; Schippers, 1970)

Manon (Gedda, Souzay, Bacquier; Rudel, 1970)

La traviata (Gedda, Panerai; Ceccato, 1971)

Maria Stuarda (Farrell, Burrows, L.Quilico; Ceccato, 1971)

The Tales of Hoffmann (Marsee, Burrows, Treigle; Rudel, 1972)

Anna Bolena (Verrett, Burrows, Plishka; Rudel, 1972)

I puritani (Gedda, L.Quilico, Plishka; Rudel, 1973)

Norma (Verrett, di Giuseppe, Plishka; Levine, 1973)

The Siege of Corinth (Verrett, Theyard, Díaz; Schippers, 1974)

Il barbiere di Siviglia (Barbieri, Gedda, Milnes, Raimondi; Levine, 1974–75)

I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Baker, Gedda, Herincx, Lloyd; G.Patanè, 1975)

Thaïs (Gedda, Milnes; Maazel, 1976)

Louise (Gedda, van Dam; Rudel, 1977)

Don Pasquale (Kraus, Titus, Gramm; Caldwell, 1978)

Rigoletto (M.Dunn, Kraus, Milnes, Ramey; Rudel, 1978)

During her operatic career, Sills recorded eighteen full-length operas:


Sills also recorded nine solo recital albums of arias and songs, and was soprano soloist on a 1967 recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2.


She starred in eight opera productions televised on PBS and several more on other public TV systems. She participated in such TV 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.


Some of those televised performances have been commercially distributed on videotape and DVD:


Others not available commercially include:


After her retirement from singing in 1980 up through 2006, Sills was the host for many of the PBS Live from Lincoln Center telecasts.

Sills, Beverly (1976). Bubbles: A Self-Portrait. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.  0-446-81520-9. A revised edition was issued in 1981 as Bubbles: An Encore.

ISBN

Sills, Beverly (with ) (1987). Beverly: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-05173-3.

Lawrence Linderman

Sills, Beverly (1987). Beverly Sills: On My Own.  0-553-45743-8. An audio book designated as a companion to Beverly: An Autobiography, with Sills speaking in interview about her life, interspersed with narration and live musical excerpts. There is no direct text from the printed autobiography.

ISBN

Paolucci, Bridget (1990). Beverly Sills. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.  1-55546-677-X. A biography for young adults.

ISBN

Sargeant, Withrop (1973). Divas. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan.  0-698-10489-7.

ISBN

Beverly Sills: Made in America (2006). Deutsche Grammophon B0007999-09. A 90-minute documentary on Sills's singing career with many rare video performance and interview clips.

Guy, Nancy (2015). "The Magic of Beverly Sills". Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press.  978-0-252-03973-7.

ISBN

Waleson, Heidi (2018). Mad Scenes and Exit Arias. New York: Henry Holt and Company.  978-1-62779-497-8. A history of New York City Opera, Sills' home company, covering her singing career and directorship there.

ISBN

: tribute site with discography, bibliography, photo gallery, sound and video clips, timeline, press articles and other resources.

Beverly Sills Online

at AllMusic

Beverly Sills

: summarizes Sills' charitable work for disabled children.

Beverly Sills:Special mother to the special children

at IMDb

Beverly Sills

Beverly Sills: National Women's Hall of Fame profile

Archived November 5, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, PBS Great Performances

"Beverly Sills: Made in America"

Beverly Sills at OperaMom.com

on YouTube

Sills at age 8, singing "Arditi: Il bacio"

Bevery Sills performs arias from La traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Manon, Mignon and Tales of Hoffmann on archive.org