Elena Anaya
Spanish actress
Beverly Sillswas an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s.
Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was especially renowned for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings.
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Beverly Sillswas an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s.
Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was especially renowned for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet’s Manon, Marie in Donizetti’s La fille du regiment, the three heroines in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata, and most notably Elisabetta in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux.
The New York Times noted,
In her prime her technique was exemplary. She could dispatch coloratura roulades and embellishments, capped by radiant high Ds and E-flats, with seemingly effortless agility. She sang with scrupulous musicianship, rhythmic incisiveness and a vivid sense of text.
NPR said her voice was “Capable of spinning a seemingly endless legato line, or bursting with crystalline perfection into waves of dazzling fioriture and thrilling high notes.”
After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the chairwoman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.
My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle’s light.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
You don’t always get what you ask for, but you never get what you don’t ask for… unless it’s contagious!
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
Art is the signature of civilizations.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
I’ve always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
There is a growing strength in women but it’s in the forehead, not the forearm.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn’t let them get her down.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
Attachment to spiritual things is… just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
My voice had a long, nonstop career. It deserves to be put to bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it can still do what it used to do. It can’t.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)
I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.
American operatic soprano (1929-2007)