Beverly Sills

I connected with opera as a teenager in the 1960s through the Metropolitan Opera weekly radio broadcasts and encouragement from an aria-singing uncle. I was soon hoarding my allowance to make purchases of recorded opera sets with singers such as Price, Tebaldi, Sutherland, Tucker, and Björling.

In 1965 I began attending East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. There my operatic world expanded through broader access to recordings, courses on opera, and even participation in productions staged by the music department. (I was in the chorus.) As thrilling as all that was, nothing could compare with the day I first heard the voice that still affects me deeply forty years later.

I was at a fellow chorus member's residence when I heard strange operatic music coming from another room. The modern-sounding music held no particular interest for me until I suddenly heard a clear, warm, silvery voice, singing with an emotional impact and an effortless technique unlike anything I had previously experienced. I asked my classmate what the music was. He brought in the album he had checked out of the library: Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe with Beverly Sills, recorded in 1958 with the New York City Opera. I had not heard of Sills, but I immediately determined to find out all I could about such a mesmerizing performer.

I checked out that album dozens of times until I could afford one for myself. I kept asking myself how someone with such obvious talents wasn't already world-famous. I took it personally that there were no other recordings to acquire.

Things improved two years later when the recording of Handel's Giulio Cesare was released. Again, Sills was my introduction to a category of opera I had previously been unaffected by, but I was still desperate to hear her in a work such as Lucia di Lammermoor, for which her voice seemed eminently suited. My wish was finally granted in 1969, when Westminster Records released her first recital disk, Bellini and Donizetti Heroines.

My college roommate was a confirmed devotee of Joan Sutherland, whose album of French opera arias also had just been released. We both purchased our respective soprano's recordings and came back to our room to listen. With only one turntable and the overwhelming urge to experience our latest treasures immediately, we had to agree to play one cut at a time from each album, alternating between the two until all cuts were heard. My roommate went first, and Sutherland's phenomenal technique and huge sound were as impressive as ever. But when I put on Sills's first aria, "O luce di quest'anima" from Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix, I was simply floored. It was all I had hoped for and more. Here was an emotionally involved, human-scaled voice, with lighting-fast coloratura and gleaming high notes. The succeeding cuts only confirmed my admiration for Sills, especially her communication of the texts: Lucia's terror, Elisabetta's sorrow, and Amina's joy. Sills's commitment brought chills, tears, and cries of "How does she do it?"

I was pleased to be present at the beginning of her rise to fame. With each new release I felt a peculiar surge of pride, as though, through my constancy, I had willed her career into being. Each magazine cover and television appearance somehow seemed partly due to me. The next logical step was to see Sills onstage. As a struggling middle-school teacher in 1970, I had little time or money to devote to such a cause. However, when I read that Sills was doing a run of Lucias at New York City Opera, I had to go. I ended up taking an all-night bus to New York to attend a Saturday matinee performance. I was late getting to the theater, running to my cheap seat as the lights went down with no time to look at my program. My anticipation swelled to a fever pitch as the fountain scene's harp signaled Lucia's arrival. And then—out came someone who definitely was not Sills (Milena Dal...