Tom's Life Bits

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===== Opera Star Beverly Sills Dies of Cancer
 =====

By VERENA DOBNIK

The Associated Press Tuesday, July 3, 2007; 7:58 AM

NEW YORK -- 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.

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.

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." © 2007 The Associated 
Press

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