Beverly Sills, a distinctive diva, dies at 78

Beverly Sills, 78, one of the greatest and most distinctive opera singers to emerge in the United States in the 20th century, is dead of cancer, her manager said.

Ms. Sills' inoperable lung cancer was made public just last month. She died about 9 o'clock Monday night, said her manager, Edgar Vincent.

Although Ms. Sills retired from performing 27 years ago, she never ceased to be a crucial figure: Shortly before retirement, she became the administrative head of the New York City Opera, the company that had nurtured her, and saved it from financial ruin. Later she was a key figure in Lincoln Center's administration, even as she continued to lend her warmth and charisma to Live from Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Opera simulcasts.

She was the mother figure of American opera. Or daughter figure. Or big-sister figure. As one intimate put it, to know about Ms. Sills was to feel as though you were related.

Only months ago, she was on the Metropolitan Opera simulcast of I Puritani, joking between scenes that the opera had notes so high "only a dog can hear them."

Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn in 1929, she was the rarest of child prodigy musicians - a singer.

She appeared on numerous radio shows before undergoing serious vocal training with Estelle Liebling, an expert in bel canto opera who taught her the kind of dramatic values that insisted text came first, music second. That molded her into an intelligent and resourceful singing actress. All the while, Ms. Sills memorized recordings by the then-reigning coloratura soprano Lily Pons, and spoke fluent French at a young age, thanks to a French nanny.

Philadelphia figured strongly in her early life: As a girl, she commuted here on a weekly basis to take lessons with Giuseppe Bamboschek, a conductor from the Caruso era. Her formal operatic debut took place 1947 in Philadelphia, where she sang a secondary role of Micaela in Carmen with the Philadelphia Civic Opera. Thereafter, she toured the country, still a teenager and billed as "the youngest diva in captivity."

Her breakthrough performance, with the New York City Opera in Handel's Julius Caesar, did not come until 1966, two decades into her career.

Instead of honing her early skills in European opera houses, Ms. Sills stayed close to home, singing with companies large and small in North America. Whether that lent her the common touch that distinguished her career or simply allowed her to preserve qualities already there, she continued to perform outside the world's operatic capitals - including concerts with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in Ambler and opera performances in Trenton. She appeared regularly at the Robin Hood Dell and one of her last full opera performances before her 1980 retirement was at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts.

An easygoing, good-humored artist who was happy to appear on TV talk shows to prove that opera wasn't just, as she put it, "fat ladies with horned helmets," she did television specials with Carol Burnett and once sang "Das Swinegold" with Miss Piggy on The Muppets.

Though Ms. Sills also performed at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala and the Royal Opera House at London's Covent Garden, such companies never were her artistic homes. She had a strong sense of independence and originality - studying Massenet's Manon with the legendary Mary Garden, she insisted on her own interpretation - and thus gravitated to companies that encouraged such values, such as Sarah Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston and, most of all, the New York City Opera.

Her stage portrayals were conceived holistically; she had much input in matters of costume and makeup, especially in her celebrated portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux, often considered to be her finest hour.

Ms. Sills needed collaborators who believed in her because she wasn't always an obvious choice for the places her theatrical ambitions took her - and she admitted to resorting to coercion at times. When campaigning for the role that made her a star, Cleopatra in Julius Caesar, she threatened to rent Carnegie Hall and perform an evening of arias from the opera to prove she was better than another singer who was the top contender.

When she heard that composer Douglas Moore thought her too tall for the title role in his opera The Ballad of Baby Doe, she defiantly auditioned in her tallest shoes and highest hat.

Though she had the vocal agility and virtuosity that made her well-equipped for the bel canto operas of Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti, she lacked the dark tone of Maria Callas or the formidable vocal purity of Joan Sutherland.

Ms. Sills had a soubrette voice, usually the vehicle of comic roles such as Rosina in The Barber of Seville. By taking on heavier roles in rarely heard Roberto Devereux - which the New York City Opera was willing to mount for her - she knew she was shortening her vocal life.

No matter. She had long planned to retire from singing at age 50, in part because of family concerns. She and her husband, journalist Peter Greenough, whom she married in 1956, had two children - Meredith (Muffy), who is deaf, and Peter Jr. (Bucky), who is mentally disabled. Greenough died last year.

The fact that she didn't have to worry about supporting her family - Greenough was independently wealthy - meant that she could choose her projects with a freedom even the greatest stars don't enjoy. She bridled at repertoire-style opera in which her characterizations were inevitably compromised by productions created for other singers. Those productions didn't allow her to convey the myriad effects she envisioned.

Seen in any number of videos, Ms. Sills emerges as an actress of cunning strategy. She was most famous for the title role of Massenet's Manon, a character easily portrayed as materialistic, faithless and superficial. But even in Manon's most corrupt moments, Ms. Sills projected a childlike fascination with and joy in the sensual pleasures of life. She often said the key to Manon is creating a woman whom the wives in the audience won't hate.

Offstage, Beverly Sills was just as winning, but in a completely different way. In contrast to her silvery singing voice, her speaking voice was that of a New York cab driver - perhaps even a baritone. And though her sense of humor wasn't ribald, it definitely was earthy.

Anyone who apologized for being underdressed for an appointment with her was likely to get a glimpse of her run-ridden stocking and her famous directness: "Are you more comfortable now?" she'd ask. And though usually on her best behavior when hosting TV shows, during January's Metropolitan Opera simulcast of I Puritani, her between-scenes commentary nearly upstaged the opera itself. After a particularly intense scene, she declared, "Well that was a rip-snorter," shocking those who prefer to hear opera discussed in loftier terms.

Though her disposition remained dependably cheerful, the second half of her life contained as many blows as the first half had triumphs. When she took on the New York City Opera - and closed the book on her singing career so decisively that she swore she didn't even sing in the shower - she hadn't realized the company was in such dire financial trouble. The situation left her too preoccupied with saving it to give much attention to artistic matters - and then, just when the company finally stablized, a warehouse fire destroyed most of its costumes, among them many she had worn in her greatest roles.

In later years, too, she helped her husband through a long decline from Alzheimers Disease (his death came only weeks before their 50th wedding anniversary) and her daughter with the effects of multiple sclerosis. She resigned her post as chairmain of the Metropolitan Opera Company in 2005 to attend to family matters.

The strains may not have been evident in her jovial I Puritani commentary earlier this year, but in unguarded moments - at a Metropolitan Opera social event this spring, for one - her eyes betrayed profound sadness. Yet some would say that it was from there her reckless humor seemed to emanate: a place where all might be lost, but there was nothing to lose.