Music: Champagne Time for Beverly Sills

City Opera's ex-diva restores it to vitality and stability Before Puccini's La Rondine opened at the New York City Opera this season, all the signs pointed to...

Music: Sills Meets the Met

Conductor Thomas Schippers gave the downbeat at 8 p.m. But the show that everyone had been waiting for did not begin until 8:22. That was when Beverly Sills...

Music: Cendrillon Becomes Cinderella

Subtitling a fairy tale at the New York City Opera In May 1982, Beverly Sills was the honored guest at the Peking Opera. She found the music entrancing, the...

Music: Sills at the Met: The Long Road Up

"It would have been nice if it had happened a while ago, but I am delighted we are doing it now." General Manager Schuyler Chapin spoke last week on behalf of...

Music: A Crown for Good Queen Bev

The Met may be mighty, but the New York City Opera has Beverly Sills. In 1966 she became a top star overnight, singing the coloratura role of Cleopatra in...

Music's Wonder Woman

When Sarah Caldwell was a child in Maryville, Mo., her favorite day of the year was the Fourth of July. She loved to stage elaborate backyard fireworks. As...

Music: Beverly Sills: The Fastest Voice Alive

IT was a crisis in the Brooklyn household of Morris Silverman. Ten-year-old Belle had announced that she wanted to become an opera star, "not an opera...

Music: Sugar and Spice at the Center

The Met's Billy Budd; City Opera's The Turk in Italy As befits a 94-year-old dowager, New York City's Metropolitan Opera has a taste for velvet and Verdi. That...

Music: Queenly Charisma

"As soon as I walk into the theater, I'm somebody else," says Soprano Beverly Sills. I'm Manon, or Lucia or whoever it happens to be. Even if, God forbid, I'm...

Music: Singer to Watch

A Manhattan audience last week cheered a young soprano with a red-flaming mane of hair, a statuesque build and a voice of beauty. She was singing concert...