Sills, Beverly

Beverly Sills: Made in America

Documentary celebrating the career of Beverly Sills, America's Diva.

Beverly Sills' greatness and recognition as a coloratura

soprano and as a director of an opera company is the

epitome of the American success story.

Includes performances and interviews from 1930-1980.

Bonus material includes highlights from La Traviata from

1955--first time release in any format!

A must-have for every Beverly Sills fan and opera maven!

Donizetti - Roberto Devereux / Rudel, Sills, Alexander, New York City Opera

Roberto Devereux, the last and probably the greatest opera Gaetano Donizetti composed for the San Carlo Opera House in Naples, is based on the intense, tangled relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex, who was beheaded for treason in 1601. The role of the queen is one of the strongest in the bel canto soprano repertoire. In this video (essentially a New York City Opera production transplanted to the Filene Center at Wolf Trap performing arts center outside Washington, D.C.), Beverly Sills gives one of the great performances of her career. She had been singing the role in New York for several years, to great critical acclaim, and had made it her own, though her voice was beginning to lose some of its freshness when this performance was filmed in 1974. In discussing the soprano stars of bel canto opera, we find a 180-degree polarity--at one extreme, the dramatic potency and vocal problems of Maria Callas; at the other, the vocal agility and smoothness of the dramatically unconvincing Joan Sutherland. Midway between these extremes is Sills, who acted almost as well as Callas, sang almost as beautifully as Sutherland, and balanced the two sides of her art more effectively than either.

John Alexander is solid in the title role. Susanne Marsee is relatively problem-free once she gets warmed up, and the supporting cast performs capably. Julius Rudel conducts with a good sense of style and proper balance between voices and orchestra. --Joe McLellan

Verdi - La Traviata / Rudel, Sills, Price, Fredricks, Wolf Trap Festival

How can you possibly go wrong with this one? One of the most popular of all operas starring one of the most popular of all opera stars singing one of her true signature roles--it's a no-brainer. This 1976 performance from the Filene Center of Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Virginia stars Beverly Sills in all her silky voiced glory. As Violetta, Verdi's most sympathetic tragic heroine, America's most beguiling diva is pitch-perfect all the way through several of the composer's miraculously melodic arias. Her lover, Alfredo, is played by Henry Price, who holds his own admirably with the superstar. Verdi specialist Julius Rudel conducts a finely detailed account of the score, and Tito Capobianco's production is an appropriate primer for novice opera fans--the vivid sets and costumes never detract from the central love story. Kirk Browning's straightforward video direction follows suit. --Kevin Filipski

Donizetti - The Daughter of the Regiment / Wendelken-Wilson, Sills, McDonald, Wolf Trap

This Daughter of the Regiment is a great memento of Beverly Sills in one of her best roles. She once described her part in Donizetti's screwball comedy as "Lucille Ball with high notes." In this enjoyable 1974 performance, that's how she plays the unsophisticated orphan girl adopted by a regiment of Napoleon's army, smitten with a peasant lad, and unwillingly betrothed to a decadent duke. Her larger-than-life presence is supported by a musically and comically capable cast, oriented toward broad comic effects, with results something like a high-grade sitcom.

Donizetti originally wrote the opera to a French libretto and later adapted it in Italian. Sung in English, it often sounds a bit like Gilbert and Sullivan. The music is both witty and spectacular, with plenty of high-note acrobatics (which Sills and William McDonald negotiate gracefully) and slapstick interactions for Spiro Malas as the gruff Sergeant Sulpice and Muriel Costa-Greenspon as the socially pretentious Marquise. --Joe McLellan

Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos / Beverly Sills, Claire Watson, Robert Nagy, John Reardon, Erich Leinsdorf, Boston Symphony Orchestra

VAI DVD 4363 Beverly Sills, Claire Watson, others, Boston Symphony Orchestra/Leinsdorf, 1969, 90 min., Color, Region 0.