Beverly Sills

The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Opera’s tribute to Beverly Sills has just ended. What a heartwarming presentation it was! The event was free. Tickets were given away starting at noon today on a first-come, first-served basis at the Met box-office. The event was also broadcast live to Times Square and on Sirius Satellite Radio (my venue). The performers included, Plá¡cido Domingo (accompanied by James Levine on piano), who sang Handel’s “Ombra mai fù”; Anna Netrebko singing Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Nightingale and the Rose”; John Relyea singing Schubert’s “An die Musik”; and Natalie Dessay who sang Strauss’ “IIch wollt ein Sträußlein binden”. The speakers included many of Sills’ family and friends: her brother, Stanley Sills told a story about the famous “pubic” typo in the first edition of Sills’ autobiography, Bubbles; Mayor Mike Bloomberg spoke of Sills’ penchant for fundraising; Met Chairman, Peter Gelb said her departure from the Met had nothing to do with his arrival (which Sills orchestrated); comedian Carol Burnett was especially touching as she relayed that Sills’ was the first person she phoned whenever she came to New York; television journalist, Barbara Walters spoke heartwarmingly about Sills’ daughter “Muffy” who is deaf and suffers from MS; and former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger described the “hide-in-plane-sight” affair the two shared (tongue-in-cheek, of course).

The two-hour event was interspersed with recorded performances by Beverly Sills, including the song, “Just an Octave Apart,” a duo she sang with Carol Burnett.

All of the speakers were sincere and witty; obviously, Beverly Sills had touched each of them in a very special way. Peter Gelb, whom Sills hired, said she would call him after he’d started working and ask, “Peter, is everything perfect?” Today, Gelb’s reply was, “Sadly, Beverly, without you the world of opera is less perfect.”

Coloratura soprano Beverly Sills passed away yesterday; she was 78 and died of cancer.

Playbill:

During the height of Sills’s stardom in the 1970s, she appeared regularly on television talk shows and variety specials with such personalities as Mike Douglas, Dick Cavett, Dinah Shore, Carol Burnett (a good friend with whom she sang duets) and even the Muppets. She was particularly associated with Johnny Carson and his Tonight Show, even filling in for Carson as guest host on occasion. Her warm and unpretentious personality made her very popular with the general public, and she used that renown to popularize opera.

In recent years, as chairman of the Metropolitan Opera’s board, she raised the money to save the company’s Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts after longtime sponsor Chevron Texaco withdrew its support.

Adieu.