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SILLS APPRECIATION
By Tim Smith
Much is demanded of opera singers. Meeting the innumerable technical and interpretive challenges of the music is just the beginning. Meeting the expectations of opera fans (or fanatics) can be even tougher.
Every note that emerges from a singer's throat will be carefully dissected, every phrase held up to someone's idea of the vocal gold standard. Pity the singer who slips, no matter how slightly or rarely, for the criticism can be swift and cruel. Even those who attain the highest stature and fame can be brought low by the nattering crowd of supposed experts, before the artist knows what's happened.
Just becoming popular can, in itself, be dangerous, for that only intensifies the scrutiny and the skepticism. A case in point these days is stellar soprano Renée Fleming, every time she steps into the spotlight. When she introduced her Violetta in "La Traviata" to the Metropolitan Opera a few years ago, the analyses were flying thick and heavy in lobbies at intermission and in blogs long afterward. And much of it wasn't pretty: she didn't hit that note squarely; she was too mannered in that aria; blah, blah. The big picture of her performance -- the innate musicality and the thoughtfulness behind the phrasing -- could get lost amid all the nitpicking.
Another American soprano who faced her share -- more than her fair share, I'd argue -- of carping, griping, and second-guessing in her day was Beverly Sills. Twenty-six years after she stopped singing in public, her reputation may remain unblemished among rank-and-file opera lovers (the new GREAT PERFORMANCES profile of her easily conveys and explains the affection she received from the general public), but within the critical classes, Sills remains undervalued and underappreciated.
Entries on her in books about famed singers or compendiums of record reviews certainly contain many approving observations about the soprano's "undeniable intelligence and musicianship," "remarkable flexibility," and "silvery clarity." But they are just as likely to include reservation after reservation: "top notes tight, strident and marred by an unpleasant bleat," "disastrous recording," "shrill and tremulous," "ragged and edgy," "the voice is simply not up to the job," "fatiguing to hear."
The impression you might get from evaluations of Sills' career is that it just didn't quite measure up, not to the initial potential and certainly not to the hype that came with her sensational stardom (that she guest-hosted for Johnny Carson on THE TONIGHT SHOW speaks volumes about the singer's mainstream appeal).
Some of the same probing analysts who wave away objections to the technical deterioration of, say, Maria Callas, because of the overall legacy (not to mention icon status) seem reluctant to grant the same courtesy to Sills. Some observers even sound like they hold her stardom against her. They focus more on the offstage woman than the artist onstage.
Maybe, in the end, Sills was simply too much of a presence, too much of a force for her critics to handle. She was extremely smart and never a shrinking violet when it came to promoting herself, she was quite a talker, she exuded endless amounts of personality (she didn't acquire the nickname "Bubbles" for nothing) -- all of this must have bothered some folks so much that they forgot just how communicatively and excitingly she could sing. They couldn't get past the Beverly-ness and thus missed out on what really mattered.
Top banner photos: Beverly Sills in ''The Merry Widow,'' ''Manon'' (© Metropolitan Opera Guild, photo by William Harris), and ''Roberto Devereux.''
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Beverly Sills on THE DICK CAVETT SHOW. |
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Carol Burnett and Beverly Sills |
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The DVD is available. |
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