Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York City, to Shirley Bahn (
née Sonia Markovna), a musician, and Morris Silverman, an insurance broker. Her parents were
Jewish immigrants from
Odessa in the
Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), and
Bucharest in Romania. She was raised in Brooklyn, where she was known, among friends, as "Bubbles" Silverman. As a child, she spoke
Yiddish, Russian, Romanian, French, and English. In 1945, Sills made her professional stage debut with a
Gilbert and Sullivan touring company produced by
Jacob J. Shubert, playing twelve cities in the US and Canada, in seven different Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In her 1987 autobiography, she credits that tour with helping to develop the comic timing she soon became famous for: "I played the title role in
Patience... a very funny, flaky girl. ... I played her as a dumb Dora all the way through.... I found that I had a gift for slapstick humor, and it was fun to exercise it onstage." Sills sang in
operettas for several more years. On July 9, 1946, Sills appeared as a contestant on the radio show ''
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts''. She sang under the pseudonym of "Vicki Lynn", as she was under contract to Shubert. Shubert did not want Godfrey to be able to say he had discovered "Beverly Sills" if she won the contest (although she did not ultimately win). Sills sang "Romany Life" from
Victor Herbert's
The Fortune Teller. In 1948-49 Sills toured with Estelle Liebling's "Liebling Singers" ("five girls and a baritone"), performing operatic excerpts in recital with piano. '', 1969 Sills made her operatic stage debut as Frasquita in
Bizet's Carmen with the
Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company on February 14, 1951 (erroneously listed in most references as 1947). She toured North America with the Charles Wagner Opera Company, in the fall of 1951, singing Violetta in
La traviata and, in the fall of 1952, singing Micaëla in
Carmen. On September 15, 1953, she made her debut with the
San Francisco Opera as Helen of Troy in
Boito's Mefistofele and also sang Donna Elvira in
Don Giovanni the same season. In a step outside of the repertoire she is commonly associated with, Sills gave four performances of the title role of
Aida in July 1954 in Salt Lake City. On October 29, 1955, she first appeared with the
New York City Opera as Rosalinde in
Johann Strauss II's
Die Fledermaus, which received critical praise. As early as 1956 she performed before an audience of over 13,000 at the
Lewisohn Stadium with the noted operatic conductor
Alfredo Antonini in an aria from
Bellini's
I puritani. Her reputation expanded with her performance of the title role in the New York premiere of
Douglas Moore's
The Ballad of Baby Doe in 1958. On November 17, 1956, Sills married journalist
Peter Greenough, of the Cleveland, Ohio, newspaper
The Plain Dealer and moved to Cleveland. She had two children with Greenough, Meredith ("Muffy") in 1959 and Peter, Jr. ("Bucky"), in 1961. Muffy had profound loss of hearing and developed multiple sclerosis in later years; Peter, Jr. was severely mentally disabled and was epilectic. Sills restricted her performing schedule for six months after each child was born to help care for them. In 1960, Sills and her family moved to
Milton, Massachusetts, near Boston. In 1962, Sills sang the title role in
Massenet's Manon with the
Opera Company of Boston, the first of many roles for opera director
Sarah Caldwell. Manon continued to be one of Sills' signature roles throughout most of her career. In January 1964, she sang her first Queen of the Night in
Mozart's The Magic Flute for Caldwell. Although Sills drew critical praise for her coloratura technique and for her performance, she was not fond of the latter role; she observed that she often passed the time between the two arias and the finale addressing holiday cards.
Peak singing years In 1966, the
New York City Opera revived
Handel's then virtually unknown
opera seria Giulio Cesare (with
Norman Treigle as Caesar), and Sills' performance as Cleopatra made her an international opera star. Sills also made her "unofficial" Met debut at a Lewisohn Stadium summer concert performance as Donna Anna in
Don Giovanni, though nothing further came of this other than offers from
Rudolf Bing for roles such as Flotow's
Martha. In subsequent seasons at the NYCO, Sills had great successes in the roles of the Queen of Shemakha in
Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel, the title role in
Manon,
Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and the three female leads Suor Angelica, Giorgetta, and Lauretta in
Puccini's trilogy
Il trittico. In 1969, Sills sang Zerbinetta in the American premiere (in a concert version) of the 1912 version of
Richard Strauss's
Ariadne auf Naxos with the Boston Symphony. Her performance of the role, especially Zerbinetta's aria, "Großmächtige Prinzessin", which she sang in the original higher key, won her acclaim. Home video-taped copies circulated among collectors for years afterwards, often commanding large sums on Internet auction sites (the performance was released commercially in 2006, garnering high praise). The second major event of the year was her debut as Pamira in
Rossini's The Siege of Corinth at
La Scala, a success that put her on the cover of
Newsweek. Sills's now high-profile career landed her on the cover of
Time in 1971, where she was described as "America's Queen of Opera". The title was appropriate because Sills had purposely limited her overseas engagements because of her family. Her major overseas appearances include London's
Covent Garden, Milan's
La Scala,
La Fenice in Venice, the
Vienna State Opera, the Théâtre de Beaulieu in
Lausanne, Switzerland, and concerts in Paris. In South America, she sang in the opera houses of
Buenos Aires and
Santiago, a concert in
Lima, Peru, and appeared in several productions in Mexico City, including
Lucia di Lammermoor with
Luciano Pavarotti. On November 9, 1971, her performance in the New York City Opera's production of
The Golden Cockerel was telecast live to cable TV subscribers. During this period, she made her first television appearance as a talk-show personality in May 1968 on ''Virginia Graham's Girl Talk
, a weekday series syndicated by ABC Films. An opera fan who was Talent Coordinator for the series persuaded the producer to put her on the air and she was a huge hit. Throughout the rest of her career she shone as a talk show guest, sometimes also functioning as a guest host. Sills underwent successful surgery for ovarian cancer in late October 1974 (sometimes misreported as breast cancer). Her recovery was so rapid and complete that she opened in The Daughter of the Regiment'' at the San Francisco Opera a month later. Following Sir
Rudolf Bing's departure as director, Sills finally made her debut at the
Metropolitan Opera on April 7, 1975 in
The Siege of Corinth, receiving an eighteen-minute ovation at her curtain call. Other operas she sang at the Met include
La Traviata,
Lucia di Lammermoor,
Thaïs, and
Don Pasquale (directed by
John Dexter). In an interview after his retirement, Bing stated that his refusal to use Sills – as well as his preference for engaging, almost exclusively, Italian stars such as
Renata Tebaldi due to his notion that American audiences expected to see Italian stars – was the single biggest mistake of his career. Sills attempted to downplay her animosity towards Bing while she was still singing, and even in her two autobiographies. But in a 1997 interview, Sills spoke her mind plainly, "Oh, Mr. Bing is an ass. [W]hile everybody said what a great administrator he was and a great this, Mr. Bing was just an improbable, impossible General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera.... The arrogance of that man." Sills was a recitalist, especially in the final decade of her career. She sang in mid-size cities and on college concert series, bringing her art to many who might never see her on stage in a fully staged opera. She also sang concerts with a number of symphony orchestras. Sills continued to perform for New York City Opera, her home opera house, essaying new roles right up to her retirement, including the leading roles in Rossini's
Il Turco in Italia,
Franz Lehár's
The Merry Widow and
Gian Carlo Menotti's
La Loca, an opera commissioned in honor of her 50th birthday.
La Loca was the first work written expressly as a vehicle for Sills and was her last new role, as she retired the following year. Her farewell performance was at
San Diego Opera in 1980, where she shared the stage with
Joan Sutherland in a production of
Die Fledermaus. Although Sills' voice type was characterized as a "lyric coloratura", she took a number of heavier
spinto and dramatic coloratura roles more associated with heavier voices as she grew older, including
Bellini's
Norma, Donizetti's
Lucrezia Borgia (with
Susanne Marsee as Orsini) and the latter composer's "Three Queens",
Anna Bolena,
Maria Stuarda and Elisabetta in
Roberto Devereux (opposite
Plácido Domingo in the title part). She was admired in those roles for transcending the lightness of her voice with dramatic interpretation, although it may have come at a cost: Sills later commented that
Roberto Devereux shortened her career by at least four years. Sills popularized opera through her talk show appearances, including
Johnny Carson,
Dick Cavett,
David Frost,
Mike Douglas,
Merv Griffin, and
Dinah Shore. Sills hosted her own talk show,
Lifestyles with Beverly Sills, which ran on Sunday mornings on
NBC for two years in the late 1970s; it won an
Emmy Award. In 1979 she appeared on
The Muppet Show, where she famously went into a "high-note contest" with
Miss Piggy. Down-to-earth and approachable, Sills helped dispel the traditional image of the temperamental opera diva.
Later years and death In 1978, Sills announced she would retire on October 27, 1980, in a farewell gala at the
New York City Opera (NYCO). In the spring of 1979, she began acting as co-director of NYCO, and became its sole general director as of the fall season of that year, a post she held until 1989, although she remained on the NYCO board until 1991. During her time as general director, Sills helped turn what was then a financially struggling opera company into a viable enterprise. She also devoted herself to various arts causes and such charities as
March of Dimes and was sought after for speaking engagements on college campuses and for fund raisers. From 1994 to 2002, Sills was chairwoman of
Lincoln Center. In October 2002, she agreed to serve as chairwoman of the
Metropolitan Opera, for which she had been a board member since 1991. She resigned as Met chairwoman in January 2005, citing family as the main reason (she had to place her husband, whom she had cared for over eight years, in a
nursing home). She stayed long enough to supervise the appointment of
Peter Gelb, formerly head of
Sony Classical Records, as the Met's general manager, to succeed
Joseph Volpe in August 2006. Peter Greenough, Sills's husband, died on September 6, 2006, at the age of 89, shortly before what would have been their 50th wedding anniversary on November 17, 2006. She co-hosted
The View for Best Friends Week on November 9, 2006, as
Barbara Walters' best friend. She said she did not sing anymore, even in the shower, to preserve the memory of her voice. She appeared on screen in movie theaters during HD transmissions live from the Met, interviewed during intermissions by the host
Margaret Juntwait on January 6, 2007 (
I puritani simulcast), as a backstage interviewer on February 24, 2007 (
Eugene Onegin simulcast), and then, briefly, on April 28, 2007 (
Il trittico simulcast). On June 28, 2007, the
Associated Press and
CNN reported that Sills was hospitalized as "gravely ill", from
lung cancer. With her daughter at her bedside, Beverly Sills succumbed to cancer on July 2, 2007, at the age of 78 in her home in
Manhattan. She is buried in Sharon Gardens, the Jewish division of
Kensico Cemetery in
Valhalla, New York. She was survived by her two children and three step-children from Peter Greenough's first marriage. Her daughter Meredith ("Muffy") Greenough died on July 3, 2016, in New York City. Her son Peter ("Bucky") Greenough died on December 28, 2021, in Robbinsville, New Jersey. ==Voice==