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 Weeks after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, Sills died Monday evening at her Manhattan home, her family and doctor at her side, said her manager, Edgar Vincent. She had never been a smoker.
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 one-liners thrown in.
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, conducting backstage interviews for the Metropolitan Opera's high-definition movie theater performances as recently as last season.
Sills first gained fame with a career that helped put Americans on the international map of opera stars. She graced the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazines.
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.
In 1947, the same mouth produced vocal glory for her operatic stage debut in Philadelphia 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 one great lady," New York City Opera chairwoman Susan Baker said. "She was just a life force
-- brilliant, witty and warm, funny, exquisitely talented. ... In addition to being an icon of the American opera world, she went on to become a great leader in the world of the arts."
But it was not until 1975, when she was already famous, that she made her Met debut in Rossini's "The Siege of Corinth." 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."
Abroad, Sills sang at such famed opera houses as Milan's La Scala, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, The Royal Opera in London and the Deutsche Opera in Berlin.
She 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 for the audience by projecting lyrics onto a screen above the stage.
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 Lincoln Center through eight boom years and launching a redevelopment project, she retired in 2002, saying she wanted "to smell the flowers a little bit."
Six months later, she was back as chairwoman of the Met.
"So I smelled the roses and developed an allergy," she joked. "I need new mountains to climb."
As Met chairwoman, Sills was instrumental in proposing Peter Gelb, now general manager, for his position. He helped push up ticket sales and pull the Met into a larger spotlight.
Citing personal reasons, Sills bowed out as 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.
Still, the word around New York was that if you needed to raise several million dollars in one night, you could turn to Sills, whose name drew donors in droves.
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.
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 Sills raised money not only for 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."
She also lent her name and voice to the Multiple Sclerosis
Society; her daughter, Meredith, 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' nurturing extended to her autistic son and to her husband,
Peter Greenough, a former journalist who lived with her at their
home as his Alzheimer's disease progressed. He died last year.
For most of her life, she had 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.
She was acclaimed for performances in such operas as Douglas
Moore's "The Ballad of Baby Doe," Massenet's "Manon" and Handel's
"Julius Ceasar."
Her 1958 appearances as Baby Doe would become among her best
known, in a rags-to-riches tale of a silver-mine millionaire who
leaves his wife for his sweetheart and eventually dies penniless.
"I loved the role," Sills wrote in her 1976 autobiography. "I
absorbed her so completely in those five weeks of studying the opera
that I knew her inside and out. I was Baby Doe."
But as a child star, she was not above singing radio commercials
with lyrics such as: "Rinso White, Rinso Bright, happy little
washday song."
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 Donizetti's
"Anna Bolena," "Maria Stuarda" and "Roberto Devereaux"
-- in which
she starred as Elizabeth, a role she called her greatest artistic
achievement.
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.
She spoke like she sang: words poured out, sprinkled with
good-humored gossip and insights, cheeky jokes and probing
questions.
She grew up in a "typical middle-class American Jewish family,"
as she put it. As a child, she took voice, dance and elocution
lessons and at 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
won first place in the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour," going on 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. She also performed in
the Catskills and at a Manhattan after-hours club.
Sills' artistic pinnacle may well have been her 1966 City Opera
performance as Cleopatra in Handel's "Julius Caesar."
"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."
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."
[Associated Press;
by Verena Dobnik] |
