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Beverly Sills helped put U.S. opera singers on the international map.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 3, 2007

NEW YORK - Beverly Sills - the Brooklyn-born opera diva who was a global icon of can-do American culture with her dazzling voice, bubbly personality and management moxie in the arts world - died Monday of cancer, her manager said. She was 78.

It had been revealed just last month that Sills was gravely ill with inoperable lung cancer. Sills, who never smoked, died about 9 p.m. Monday at her Manhattan home with her family and doctor at her side, said her manager, Edgar Vincent.

Beyond the music world, Sills gained fans worldwide with a style that matched her childhood nickname, "Bubbles." The relaxed, redheaded diva appeared frequently on The Tonight Show, The Muppet Show and in televised performances with her friend Carol Burnett.

Together, they did a show from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera called "Sills and Burnett at the Met, " singing rip-roaring duets with funny one-liners thrown in.

Sills first gained fame with a high-octane career that helped put Americans on the international map of opera stars.

Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, she quickly became Bubbles, an endearment coined by the doctor who delivered her, noting that she was born blowing a bubble of spit from her little mouth.

Fast-forward to 1947, when the same mouth produced vocal glory for her operatic stage debut in Philadelphia in a bit role in Bizet's Carmen. Sills became a star with the New York City Opera, where she first performed in 1955 in Johann Strauss Jr.'s Die Fledermaus. She was acclaimed for performances in such operas as Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe, Massenet's Manon and Handel's Giulio Cesare, and the roles of three Tudor queens in works by Gaetano Donizetti.

Sills' face once graced the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines as an American who had conquered the classical music world, even abroad - at the time a rarity.

It was not until late in her career that she achieved the pinnacle, appearing at the Met, the nation's premier opera house.

Sills retired from the stage in 1980 at age 51 after a three-decade singing career and began a new life as an executive and leader of New York's performing arts community. First, she became general director of the New York City Opera.

Before retiring, Sills sang at such famed opera houses as La Scala and Teatro San Carlo in Italy, London's Royal Opera at Covent Garden and the Berlin Opera.

Aside from husband Peter Greenough's three children from a previous marriage, the couple had two children of their own, Peter Jr., known as "Bucky, " and Meredith, known as "Muffy."

[Last modified July 2, 2007, 23:42:36]