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Watch an excerpt from "Roberto Devereux."
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Few opera singers in the 20th century enjoyed as much popularity and public affection as soprano Beverly Sills -- or had the skill and imagination to embrace new careers after retiring from the stage, as she did so successfully, serving, in succession, as general director of the New York City Opera, chairwoman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and chairwoman of the Metropolitan Opera. In an interview for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online, Beverly Sills, now 77, spoke about both stages of her public life and about her personal life.
GREAT PERFORMANCES: In BEVERLY SILLS: MADE IN AMERICA there is wonderful footage of you as a young child, singing up a storm at age seven in a short film and appearing on various shows a few years later. Did any of that early work and any of its pressures keep you from just being a kid?
Beverly Sills: I don't feel I missed out on childhood at all. I was not put into a special school. I went to public schools -- P.S. 91, P.S. 232, and P.S. 221 in Brooklyn -- and then Erasmus Hall High School.
GP: Was there ever any doubt that you would grow up to be an opera singer?
Sills: My mother told my aunt, "My daughter is going to be a famous opera singer." I was only two years old at the time. I grew up in a European household; my father was Romanian, my mother was from Russia. My brothers and I were first-generation Americans. All the attention was on my two older brothers. My father thought that you could have the real American dream only with an educated mind, and so the boys were going to be educated. I was supposed to be married by the time I was 17. I never understood what was magical about the number 17. My mother decided that if I couldn't go to college, I should be multilingual. She spoke six languages fluently, and my father did too. My mother was an opera nut. She played opera on her little Victrola morning, noon, and night. Her favorite was Lily Pons. A great dream of her life was that Lily and I would be friends.
GP: Did your siblings develop any interest in opera too?
Sills: My brothers -- and their sons and daughters -- are all doctors. Nobody in the family does anything musical. I said to one of my brothers once, "You never come to hear me sing." He just said, "You never come to see me operate," which made sense to me at the time. [Laughter]
GP: Many sopranos today would probably love to know everything that your voice teacher, Estelle Liebling, passed on to you. What would you say was the most important thing she taught you?
Sills: She taught the art of coloratura. Miss Liebling was the last surviving pupil of [Mathilde] Marchesi. She taught me how to trill. She had me do very disciplined scales and runs. She was also a stickler for a composer's markings in a score.
GP: One of the most exciting things about your performances of bel canto operas was the extraordinary ornamentation you added to the music. Did Miss Liebling help you develop your approach to ornamentation, help you become comfortable with the idea? And did the concept of embellishing vocal lines come naturally to you?
Sills: Miss Liebling wrote a set of ornaments and they were published, so when you sang for her, you sang the ones she used. I learned and gained a lot of freedom from doing bel canto operas with Sarah Caldwell [the late opera conductor and founder of the Opera Company of Boston] and especially from Roland Gagnon, an assistant to Sarah. Roland wrote all those ornaments that I sang as Cleopatra [in Handel's "Julius Caesar"] and Lucia [in Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor"]. He taught me a lot of confidence and how to be a little more free. When Roland wrote the ornaments for the mad scene [in "Lucia"], they were based on a dramatic premise. Each ornament had something to do with what was happening onstage.
GP: Not everything that happened onstage, or in recording studios, won praise from critics. Did you ever lose sleep, or your temper, over negative reviews?
Sills: Did I get angry? Sure. It's normal, it's human nature. Constructive criticism is an oxymoron. I never believe singers who say they don't read reviews. Give me a break. We may not agree with them; that's something else. But not to read them -- that's stupid. There were times when I felt that some people were just bad writers. That, I resented. Being a critic requires the talent of good writing, just as singing requires the talent of a good voice. I want to enjoy reading a review, whether I agree or not. I love to read very good writing. So was I angry a lot? Who wouldn't be? But I was tickled when [the reviews] went in my direction. We all want to be loved. That's what we're here for.
GP: Anytime opera lovers start talking about singers, someone invariably says that we just don't have the voices that we used to. Do you share that thinking? What's your take on the quality of singing today?
Sills: I remember an "Andrea Chenier" with [Renata] Tebaldi, [Mario] Del Monaco, and [Ettore] Bastianini. No, we can't duplicate that today. But I also remember an "Otello" with Renée Fleming and [Placido] Domingo and [James] Levine in the pit. That's not bad. That was a pretty sweet "Otello." But we haven't replaced [Birgit] Nilsson yet. We're weak in Wagnerian voices today and that has to be beefed up. But there have always been periods when we didn't have a lot of great Wagnerians, so that doesn't worry me so much. The pendulum does swing back.
GP: What about the future of opera, for attracting new audiences?
Sills: At the Met, we have a wonderful board member who underwrote $2 million in tickets so they can sell $20 seats. And I've been told that a high percentage of the people buying them have never been to an opera before. This is a very positive thing. And the more we can use technology to encourage people to try opera, the better. Anything that will help people realize that this is not an elitist art form is worth trying. People need to know that singers don't have horns coming out of their heads. The only difference is that they go to work when everyone else is going home. I am disappointed how little we are doing for classical music in the celebrity world we're living in now. Opera singers are very literate, they have a lot of charisma, [and] people can identify with them. But today, people worship at the feet of a woman with no clothes washing a car and she can't put three words together. And television has deteriorated to such an extent that I only watch news now.
GP: Is there anything you never got around to doing, one more career path you might have tried along the way?
Sills: No, I don't think so. I did it all. Almost anything you put to me, I've done. There are no firsts left in my life. There are no more mountains to climb. It's nice walking in the flat terrain.
GP: Since you gave your farewell performance in 1980, you've been on several boards of directors. Did you always have an affinity for business as well as music?
Sills: Going into the corporate world was something I always wanted to do. I served on the boards of American Express, Macy's, Time Warner, and Human Genome Sciences. But when I walked away from being chairman of the Metropolitan Opera [in January 2005, to care for her ailing husband], I put a period on it.
GP: How are things going now that you have left that corporate part of your life behind?
Sills: My daughter and I do jigsaw puzzles together; we love them. And I'm a crossword puzzle lunatic. I am going a lot to the opera, which I didn't expect to do. I went to see the new "Barber of Seville" at the Metropolitan, which I enjoyed enormously. But I probably sang 300 Rosinas and I [still] remember every note, every word of it, which is crazy. That can make it hard for me to get a fresh look at that opera. I'm also going to some symphony things that I probably never would have before. I go out two nights a week and pick very carefully. And I am reading a lot more than I ever read before. At two this morning, I started MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN by Jonathan Lethem. I'm not going down THE NEW YORK TIMES best-seller list. I am reading many different things. That's fun. And now I have the time to go into Barnes & Noble and shop.
GP: You have had many unfortunate things happen in your personal life, even as you enjoyed so many public triumphs. Where do you find the inner strength to deal with the difficulties?
Sills: I had extreme highs and extreme lows in my life. You have no choice but to go on. What's the alternative? So many people in my family depended on my good cheer. I always said I'm not a happy woman, but a cheerful woman. A happy woman has everything going for her. A cheerful woman doesn't have everything going for her, but manages to be cheerful in spite of it. It's so boring to be a whiner. I have an attitude that says: "I won't be licked." At this stage in my life, I still have it. If I had a tattoo, that's what it would say. My husband and I had a good ride; I was very lucky. Today [November 17] would have been our 50th anniversary. [Her husband, Peter Greenough, died in September 2006.] Now I am spending all my time with my daughter [Muffy] and keeping her spirits going. She just got out of the hospital after a very unpleasant stay. She had a very difficult procedure. When the doctor saw me afterward he said, "That kid has the most radiant smile." She's 47. She and I do not take defeat easily. We'll pull through it.
GP: There are many wonderful souvenirs of your career preserved on audio and video, but some of them stand out for being just so moving -- "Im chambre séparée" from Heuberger's "Der Opernball," for example, or "Marietta's Lied" from Korngold's "Die tote Stadt." How do you explain such inner radiance?
Sills: I think it's just the sheer love of the music. I was very rarely pleased with my recordings, but I like those, especially "Im chambre séparée" and a Strauss song, "Breit' über mein Haupt," one of the most exquisite songs I know. The final scene from Strauss' "Daphne" is another thing that I loved to sing because it was just so beautiful. I remember doing that scene in a concert with [conductor Erich] Leinsdorf. When it was over, he had tears streaming down his face. I don't think it was because of my performance, but just because we had collaborated on this incredibly beautiful music. He took my hand and we just walked off the stage. We never came back. I went to my dressing room and just bawled. He probably did the same thing.
I look at these things now very objectively, as if it all happened to somebody else. I would hate to get back into the ring now and face the bull -- in every sense of the word. But it was fun. I had a very good time as a singer. It's not that I would come offstage and say, "Boy, wasn't that gorgeous." I would just think how fortunate I was to be doing what I had just done. I was very lucky. I loved to sing. I just loved doing it.
Interview by Tim Smith for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online conducted in November 2006.
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