Barreling Through Life's Obstacles

The American soprano Beverly Sills (1929–2007), who died this week of lung cancer at age 78, won national fame by her dauntless following of Hollywood stereotypes. From a childhood spent performing on radio and film as a Shirley Temple wannabe, she grew into a trilling iron butterfly in the Jeanette McDonald, Deanna Durbin, and Lily Pons tradition. Trained for decades by the vocal coach Estelle Liebling, Sills, who was born Belle Miriam Silverman of Romanian-Ukrainian Jewish ancestry, developed an acrobatic voice of the French school, like Pons or Mado Robin, with a relatively thin but liquidly seductive tone. Perhaps because she sang abroad relatively rarely, Sills did not bring life to the foreign languages that she sang, but her acting skills were finely honed and she moved remarkably well onstage. I recall her performance as the title character in "Lucia di Lammermoor" at the Metropolitan Opera House around 30 years ago near the end of her career, when, after the Mad Scene's high notes, she spiraled down to the stage in a surprisingly dynamic diva collapse, leaving the audience gasping.

This kind of agility was part of her overall self-assured command onstage. She could make a song she frequently performed in recitals, "ArtIs Callingfor Me," from Victor Herbert's operetta "The Enchantress," into an emblematic message: "I long to be a prima donna, donna, donna … I want to be a screechy peachy cantatrice/Like other plump girls that I see … Art is calling for me." The cheery self-mockery of Herbert's song was natural for Sills, who was indeed a kind of enchantress. Using jokes to add to her own mythology, in recitals as early as 1970 she performed what she called "Sillsiana," a bunch of crowd-pleasing arias stitched into one pastiche. Her myth continued post-retirement with the lovingly parodic character of "Sylvia Bills, America's Most Beloved Retired Diva," as performed by New York's La Gran Scena Opera, a troupe of drag performers.

Sills was not the most marvelous soprano voice of her generation nor was she as musically and linguistically acute as other lyric sopranos like Benita Valente or Phyllis Curtin. Yet she was the one invited on television talk shows, and after retirement from the stage, it was she who became general director of the New York City Opera, chairwoman of Lincoln Center, and later, of the Metropolitan Opera.

With the subtlety of a snowplow, Sills attacked her goals, whether in fund raising or handling the press. As an administrator she could woo the harshest critics by offering coffee cake and stock tips in her office. In 1966, she obtained a key operatic role by somewhat more sinister Machiavellian maneuvering. Married to a multimillionaire scion of a family that owned the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sills told the New York City Opera's then-music director Julius Rudel that she would rent out Carnegie Hall with her husband's money and sing arias from Handel's "Julius Caesar" unless she was assigned the plum role of Cleopatra in an upcoming City Opera production of the opera. Rudel caved and jettisoned the previously cast — and extremely able — soprano Ms. Curtin, and Sills's career was on the fast track.

Barreling through career obstacles stood her in good stead for attacking major life ones, such as a 1974 cancer operation and the birth of a hearing-impaired daughter, as well as a severely autistic son.

In an obituary in the Washington Post, music critic Tim Page wrote that Sills was a "complex" entity. "Those who knew her slightly liked her enormously," Mr. Page wrote, "those who knew her better were sometimes a little afraid of her."

The best way to remember Sills today is by watching DVDs, such as two Wolf Trap Festival productions on VAI — a 1975 Donizetti "Roberto Devereux" and a 1976 Verdi "La Traviata" — which preserve her stage presence. Also worthy of noteisa 1969 concert performance of Richard Strauss's "Ariadne Auf Naxos," also on DVD.

Alas, almost all of Sills's recordings were made too late, after her voice was weakening. Few would disagree, however, that she deserved her place as America's most celebrated "screechy, peachy cantatrice."