SILLS, BEVERLY

born May 25, 1929, New York, N.Y., U.S. original name Belle Miriam Silverman American operatic soprano who won international fame many years before her Metropolitan Opera debut at age 46. Sills was early destined by her mother for a career in the performing arts. At age three, as Bubbles Silverman, she began a four-year stint as a regular singer on Uncle Bob's Rainbow House, a Saturday morning radio program. She won a prize on Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour at age six, made a couple of motion picture shorts, and became a regular on Major Bowes' Capitol Family Hour and, later, on the soap opera Our Gal Sunday, on which she played a nightingirl of the mountains. At age 12 she retired to complete her education in public schools and the Professional Children's School in New York, from which she graduated in 1945. Also that year she toured with a Gilbert and Sullivan opera company and in 1947 made her operatic debut with the Philadelphia Civic Opera. She spent several years traveling with touring opera companies and making guest appearances in various opera centres throughout the United States. In 1955 she became a member of the company of the New York City Opera, and in 1956 she created the role of Baby Doe in Douglas Moore's folk opera The Ballad of Baby Doe. Sills married Peter Bulkeley Greenough in 1956. The difficult circumstances of their childrenone born deaf and the other with mental disabilitiesforced Sills to leave the stage in 1961. She returned in 1963 to sing in Don Giovanni, The Abduction from the Seraglio, and Il Trittico. Her performance as Cleopatra in the New York City Opera company's 1966 production of George Frideric Handel's Giulio Cesare brought her to international prominence as a performer of the florid repertoire. Sills then made several appearances in European opera houses including La Scala, Milan (1969), and Covent Garden, London (1970). Her Metropolitan Opera debut, as Pamira in Gioacchino Rossini's Le Sige de Corinthe in 1975, was a phenomenal success. Bubbles: A Self-Portrait (1976) and Beverly (1987) are her autobiographies. From 1979 to 1989 she was director of the New York City Opera, which she restored to financial and administrative stability after years of disarray. In 1994 she became the first female head of New York's Lincoln Center.