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!['Mary Stuart' 1 / Donizetti * ROSALIND PLOWRIGHT / JANET BAKER [in English]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110522140507im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CBx_pgjEtt8/0.jpg "'Mary Stuart' 1 / Donizetti * ROSALIND PLOWRIGHT / JANET BAKER [in English]")
The plot is loosely based on the lives of Mary, Queen of Scots (Mary Stuart) and her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. Schiller had invented the confrontation of the two Queens, who in fact never met. The libretto adds the love story of Mary Stuart and Dudley, which has no basis in fact. At the time of the events portrayed, Dudley was actually 55, Elizabeth was 53 and Mary was 44.
The King of Naples banned performances of the opera, and Donizetti responded by removing large segments of the score for use in a different work, Buondelmonte. However, Maria Malibran (a famous mezzo-soprano who often sang soprano parts) forced a premiere at La Scala and ignored the censoring revisions, but a ban by the city was enforced. Realizing the impossibility of a run in Italy, a London premiere was planned, but Malibran's death at the age of 28 in 1836 cancelled the project. Except for several productions of the Buondelmonte version, the work was neglected until 1958 when a production in Bergamo, Donizetti's hometown, brought the original work into popularity. The premiere in England was held on 1 March 1966.When forced to simplify part of the music for the original Elisabetta, Donizetti scribbled on the margin "But it's ugly!", and further on refused a change, writing "Do it, and may you live for a hundred years!"
Category:Operas by Gaetano Donizetti Category:Italian-language operas Category:1835 operas Category:Operas Category:Operas set in the British Isles
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During her apprentice years, DiDonato competed in several notable vocal competitions. In 1996 she won second prize in the Eleanor McCollum Competition and was a district winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. In 1997 she won a William Matheus Sullivan Award. In 1998 she won second prize in the Operalia Competition, first place in the Stewart Awards, won the George London Competition, and a received a Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation.
In the 1999–2000 season, DiDonato performed the role of Meg in the world premiere of Mark Adamo's Little Women at Houston Grand Opera with Stephanie Novacek as Jo and Chad Shelton as Laurie. She also performed the role of Cherubino in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro with Santa Fe Opera and the role of Isabella in Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri with the New Israeli Opera. In addition, DiDonato gave a recital at New York's Morgan Library under the auspices of the George London Foundation and sang the mezzo-soprano solos in the Seattle Symphony's production of Handel's Messiah.
In the 2000–2001 season, DiDonato made her debut at La Scala as Angelina in Rossini's La Cenerentola, returned to Houston Grand Opera as Dorabella in Mozart's Così fan tutte, and sang the mezzo-soprano solos in Bach's Mass in B Minor with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and conductor John Nelson. In 2003 DiDonato was the recipient of New York City Opera's Richard Gold Debut Award
In the 2003–2004 season, DiDonato made her debut with the San Francisco Opera as Rosina in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia and reprised the role with Houston Grand Opera. She also performed Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo with De Nederlandse Opera and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. She also sang the role of Ascanio in a concert performance of Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini with l'Orchestre National de France and appeared in solo recitals at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Kansas City's Folly Theater, and Wigmore Hall among others. She also sang at the Hollywood Bowl in a production of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. DiDonato won the Metropolitan Opera's Beverly Sills Award in 2007.
In the 2007–2008 season, DiDonato debuted at the Liceu as Angelina in La Cenerentola and at the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia. She also sang the title role in Handel's Alcina with Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco and the title role in Handel's Ariodante at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. She sang Roméo in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Opéra Bastille and returned to Madrid's Teatro Real as Idamante in Idomeneo in July 2008. DiDonato also gave recitals at La Scala, Lincoln Center, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and performed a special concert of Handel arias which was recorded in Brussels.
In the 2008–2009 season, DiDonato returned to Covent Garden as Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni and as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia. In a performance of that opera on July 7, DiDonato slipped onstage and broke her right fibula; she finished the first act hobbling and the rest of the performance on crutches. She then performed the five remaining scheduled performances from a wheelchair. She will also be performing the roles of Beatrice in Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict with Houston Grand Opera, Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo with Opéra National de Paris, and Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia in her debut with Wiener Staatsoper. DiDonato will also appear in concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Kansas City Symphony, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the latter of which under the baton of James Levine. She will also be touring Europe and the United States with Les Talens Lyriques giving concerts of Handel arias and will give performances at Wigmore Hall and the Rossini Opera Festival.
DiDonato also has sung in concert with the SWR Orchestra Kaiserslautern, The King's Consort, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony.
Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:American opera singers Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos Category:Wichita State University alumni Category:Operalia prize-winners
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She began playing piano at the age of six, before moving to Athens in 1958 to concentrate on singing. She graduated from the Greek National Conservatoire in 1965 and then travelled to Munich to continue studying under a Maria Callas scholarship.
Baltsa made her first appearance in an opera in 1968 as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro at Frankfurt Opera, before going on to appear as Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at the Vienna State Opera in 1970. Under the guidance of Herbert von Karajan, she soon became a regular at the prestigious Salzburg Festival. She became Kammersängerin of the Vienna State Opera in 1980.
Her most well known performance is that of Carmen by Georges Bizet, which she has sung a number of times with José Carreras. She has also sung works by Mozart (notably Così fan tutte), Rossini (Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, L'italiana in Algeri), Mascagni (Cavalleria Rusticana), Verdi (Aida, La forza del destino, Il trovatore, Don Carlos), Bellini (I Capuleti e i Montecchi) and Donizetti (Il Campanello, Maria Stuarda).
She also starred in the German film Duett in 1992, playing an opera singer.
Category:1944 births Category:Living people Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Greek actors Category:Greek artists Category:Greek female singers Category:Greek opera singers Category:Members of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos Category:People from Lefkada
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She won 1st Prize in the 7th International Singing Competition, Sofia in 1979. She was awarded the Prix Fondation Fanny Heldy for her performance as Leonora in the 1984 recording of Verdi's Il trovatore with Domingo, Brigitte Fassbaender, Giorgio Zancanaro, Yevgeny Nesterenko and the Choir and Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Carlo Maria Giulini. (Deutsche Grammophon code 423-858-2.)
Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos Category:Operatic sopranos Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:English opera singers Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the Royal Northern College of Music Category:People from Worksop
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Montserrat Concepción Bibiana Caballé i Folch (Barcelona, Spain, 12 April 1933) is a Spanish operatic soprano. Although she sang a wide variety of roles, she is best known as an exponent of the bel canto repertoire, notably the works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi.
Having lost some of her earlier brilliance and purity of voice, Caballé made up for it finding a more dramatic utterance and expressive singing in roles that demanded it. Thus, in 1978, she sang Tosca in San Francisco with Pavarotti, Norma in Madrid, and Adriana Lecouvreur at the Met opposite José Carreras.
Caballé married the tenor Bernabé Martí in 1964. Her daughter, Montserrat Martí (Montsita), is also a soprano. The two occasionally perform together.
Caballé has recorded extensively throughout her long career and has made many notable recordings of complete operas as well as recital albums, most notably on the RCA Red Seal label.
Caballé is known affectionately in the opera world as La Superba, a sign that she has reached the status of diva.
Category:1933 births Category:Living people Category:Catalan opera singers Category:Spanish female singers Category:Spanish opera singers Category:Spanish sopranos Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Latin Grammy Award winners Category:Operatic sopranos Category:Alumni of the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu Category:Singers from Barcelona
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Born in Chiusavecchia, Devia trained at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Iolanda Magnoni. She made her stage debut in Treviso, as Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, in 1973, and quickly sang throughout Italy, making her debut at La Scala in Milan in 1987, as Giulietta in ''I Capuleti e i Montecchi.
On the international scene, she appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, as Lucia, and Carnegie Hall, as Lakmé, in 1979, and made her debut at the Paris Opera and the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1987, and at the Royal Opera House in London, in 1988.
She was a regular at the Pesaro Festival and at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca, where she won great acclaim in the exhumation of long neglected operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and other bel canto composers. She is also admired in Mozart operas, especially as Constanze in Abduction from the Seraglio, as well as Verdi's Gilda and Violetta.
Category:1948 births Category:Italian female singers Category:Italian opera singers Category:Italian sopranos Category:Operatic sopranos Category:Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia alumni Category:People from the Province of Imperia Category:Living people
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She was particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten. During her career, which spanned the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and widely admired for her dramatic intensity, perhaps best represented in her famous portrayal as Dido, the tragic heroine of Berlioz's magnum opus Les Troyens. As a concert performer, Baker was noted for her interpretations of the music of Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar. David Gutman, writing in the Gramophone, described her performance of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder as "intimate, almost self-communing."
In 1966, Baker made her debut as Hermia at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and went on to sing Berlioz's Dido, Kate in Britten's Owen Wingrave, Mozart's Vitellia and Idamantes, Cressida in William Walton's Troilus and Cressida and the title role in Gluck's Alceste (1981) there. For the English National Opera, she sang the title role in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (1971), Charlotte in Massenet's Werther, and the title roles in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda and Handel's Giulio Cesare.
Category:1933 births Category:Chancellors of the University of York Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos Category:English opera singers Category:English mezzo-sopranos Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Living people Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:People from Grimsby Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society Category:RCA Victor artists
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Nelly made her operatic debut in Mozart's Magic Flute, as the Queen of the Night at Iaşi Romanian Opera, and continued to sing at Brasov Opera House between 1975-1978 in roles such as Mimi in La Boheme, Micael, Micaela in Carmen and Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus.
In 1981 she fled the communist regime and months later she debuted in Glasgow at the Scottish Opera as Violetta in La Traviata. Manon Lescaut and Tosca followed. The following year she made her debut at the Royal Opera House in London as Nedda in Pagliacci, opposite Jon Vickers, Piero Cappuccilli and Thomas Allen. She later appeared as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, Antonia in Les contes d'Hoffmann and Valentine in Les Huguenots. In 1983, she made her debut at La Scala in Milan, as Lucia di Lammermoor, and thereafter appeared at most major opera houses of Europe: Amsterdam, Brussels, Rome, Hamburg, Geneva, Munich, Vienna, Salzburg, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, etcetera, earning considerable acclaim for her interpretation of Violetta in La traviata, amongst many other roles such as Mimi in La bohème, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Silvana in Respighi's La Fiamma, the title role in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur and the title role in Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini.
Miricioiu has also appeared in the United States, notably in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco, and made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as Mimi (La bohème), in 1989. She also appeared in South America, notably in Santiago, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
In 1992, she sang Amenaide in Rossini's Tancredi to great acclaim in Salzburg, and then began concentrating on the bel canto repertory, singing other Rossinian heroines such as Armida, Semiramide, Ermione, as well as Donizetti and Bellini roles, such as Anna Bolena, Roberto Devereux, Il pirata and Norma.
In 1996, she was trusted with the revival of the infamous Tosca production for Maria Callas at Covent Garden. The revival was a huge success and established her as one of the best Tosca's seen on stage.
She also began an association with Opera Rara, appearing in long-forgotten works by Rossini and Donizetti but also by composers such as Pacini and Mercadante, both in concerts and recordings, notably Ricciardo e Zoraide, Rosmonda d'Inghilterra, Maria de Rudenz, Maria, regina d'Inghilterra, Orazi e Curiazi and Emma d'Antiocchia.
Her repertory also includes Verdi roles in opera such as Ernani, Luisa Miller, I vespri siciliani, Don Carlo. She has worked with some of the most prestigious conductors and directors, and opposite leading artists of the day, such as José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, José Cura, Roberto Alagna, to name but a few.
Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:British female singers Category:British opera singers Category:British people of Romanian descent Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Adjud
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In her youth, Dessay had intended to be a ballet dancer, and then an actress. She discovered her talent for singing whilst taking acting classes, and shifted her artistic focus to music. Dessay was encouraged to study voice at the Conservatoire national de région de Bordeaux and gained experience as a chorister in Toulouse. At the competition Les Voix Nouvelles, run by France Télécom, she was awarded First Prize (Premier Prix de Concours) followed by a year's study at Paris Opera's Ecole d'Art Lyrique, where she sang "Elisa" in Mozart's Il re pastore. Also, she entered the International Mozart Competition at the Vienna State Opera, winning First Prize.
She was quickly approached by a number of theatres, and subsequently sang "Blondchen", "Madame Herz" (in Der Schauspieldirektor), "Zerbinetta" and "Zaïde" at the Opéra National de Lyon and the Opéra Bastille, as well as "Adele" in Die Fledermaus in Geneva.
She attended a performance where Barbara Bonney had sung Sophie in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier under Carlos Kleiber. Dessay was cast in the same role with another conductor. Her hope was to work with Maestro Kleiber, but he died before any project came to fruition. Blondchen in Die Entführung and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos became her best-known and most often played roles.
In October 1994 Dessay made her Metropolitan Opera debut in New York in the role of Fiakermilli in Strauss's Arabella, and returned there in September 1997 as Zerbinetta and in February 1998 as Olympia.
The Staatsoper approached Dessay with two operas: Richard Strauss's Die schweigsame Frau and an unfinished opera by Alban Berg, Lulu. Dessay declined the latter, saying the score was too difficult for her. She admitted that Die schweigsame Frau was already painful to learn.
At the festival of Aix-en-Provence, Dessay first performed the role of the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute. Although she was hesitant to perform the role, saying that she didn't want to play any evil characters, director Robert Carsen convinced her that this Queen would be different, almost a sister to Pamina. Dessay agreed to do the role, claiming it would be a one-time series of performances. There followed a year-long series of final performances of the Queen of the Night.During the 2001–2002 season in Vienna, she began to experience vocal difficulties and had to be replaced in almost all of the performances of La sonnambula. Subsequently, she was forced to cancel several other performances, including a French version of Lucia di Lammermoor in Lyon and a Zerbinetta at the Royal Opera House in London. She withdrew from the stage and underwent surgery on one of her vocal cords in July 2002. In February 2003, she returned to live performances in a Paris concert. Later, she cancelled and had further surgery, but by mid-2005 she was back on stage.
In the summer of 2003, Dessay gave her first US recital in Santa Fe. She was so attracted to New Mexico in general, and to Santa Fe in particular, that Santa Fe Opera (SFO) quickly rearranged its schedule to feature her in SFO's 2004 production of La sonnambula. She returned in the 2006 SFO season as Pamina (The Magic Flute). She gave her first performances in the role of Violetta in La traviata
The 2006/2007 season schedule included Lucia di Lammermoor and La sonnambula in Paris, La fille du régiment directed by Laurent Pelly in London and Vienna, and a Manon in Barcelona. She opened the 2007–08 season at the Met as Lucia and also repeated her role in La fille du regiment. In January 2009 she sang the part of Melisande in a much acclaimed stagione production of Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy at "Theater an der Wien", the second opera house in Vienna, alongside Laurent Naouri. On 2 March 2009, Dessay sang the title role in La Sonnambula at the New York Metropolitan Opera. It was the first new production of the opera at the Met since Joan Sutherland sang the title role in the 1960s.
On 3 March 2010 the Metropolitan Opera announced that, on account of illness, she would not be performing Ophélie as scheduled in its new production of Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet.
In other media, Dessay provided the singing voice for the character of Anna Sörensen (played by Diane Kruger) in the movie Joyeux Noël (2005).
Dessay is married to the bass-baritone Laurent Naouri, and they have two children.
Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:French opera singers Category:Operatic sopranos Category:French sopranos Category:Olivier Award winners Category:French Jews
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Known as "La Diva Turca" (The Turkish Diva) and "La Regina" (The Queen) in the opera world, Gencer was a notable bel canto soprano who spent most of her career in Italy, from the early 1950s through the mid-1980s, and had a repertoire encompassing more than seventy roles. She made very few commercial recordings; however, numerous bootleg recordings of her performances exist. In particular, Gencer was associated with the heroines of Donizetti.
Gencer lost her father at a very young age. She grew up in the Çubuklu district of Istanbul, on the Anatolian side of the Bosporus, and began to study singing at the Istanbul Conservatory; but dropped out to study privately in Ankara with her teacher, the Italian soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi. She sang in the chorus of the Turkish State Theater until she made her operatic debut in Ankara in 1950 as Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana. During the next few years, she became well-known in Turkey and sang frequently at functions for the Turkish government.
In 1953, Gencer made her Italian debut at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples as Santuzza. She returned to Naples the following year for performances of Madama Butterfly and Eugene Onegin. In 1957, she made her debut at La Scala in Milan as Mme. Lidoine in the world premiere of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. She went on to appear regularly at La Scala, performing nineteen roles between 1957 and 1983, including Leonora in La forza del destino, Elisabetta in Don Carlos, Aïda, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Norma, Ottavia in L'incoronazione di Poppea, and Alceste. At La Scala, she also appeared as the First Woman of Canterbury in the world premiere of Pizzetti's L'assassinio nella cattedrale in 1958.
In 1960 Gencer visited with concert programme USSR, where she performed in Moscow and in Baku.
In 1962, Gencer made her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Elisabetta di Valois and as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. She made her U.S. debut at the San Francisco Opera in 1956 as Francesca in Francesca da Rimini. She sang at other American opera houses as well, but never sang at the Metropolitan Opera, though there had been discussions for her to sing Tosca there in 1956.
She performed Chopin's Polish songs in Paris with Nikita Magaloff, her Liszt-Bartok performance in La Scala and her concert regarding 'the operas about Turks' within the Venice Carnival at La Fenice Theatre, show her innovative character as an opera singer. In 1985, Gencer retired from the operatic stage with a performance of Gnecco's La Prova di un'opera seria at La Fenice. She continued to appear in concerts until 1992. As of 2007, she was still active, and had recently been appointed by La Scala's music director Riccardo Muti to run its school for young artists.
Throughout her career, Gencer was known primarily as a Donizetti interpreter. Among her best-known Donizetti performances are Belisario, Poliuto, Anna Bolena, Lucrezia Borgia, Maria Stuarda, and Caterina Cornaro. Her most acclaimed and best-known performance, though, was Roberto Devereux, which she sang in Naples in 1964.
In addition to the bel canto roles for which she is best known, Gencer's repertory also included works by such composers as Prokofiev, Mozart, and Puccini. She appeared in many rarely performed operas, including Smareglia's La Falena, Rossini's Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, Spontini's Agnese di Hohenstaufen, Pacini's Saffo, and Gluck's Alceste.
Gencer achieved an international career in a short time and performed with renowned Italian maestros such as; Gui, Serafin, Gavazzeni and Muti. She contributed to the improvement of the 'Donizetti Renaissance' with her great performances of Donizetti's forgotten operas.
Gencer's repertoire consists of 72 roles including works from composers such as; Monteverdi, Gluck, Mozart to neo-classical period; from Cherubini, Spontini, Johann Simon Mayr and the romantic period to Puccini, Prokofiev, Britten, Poulenc, Menotti and Rocca; from a lyric soprano varying to dramatic colorature.
In 1982, Gencer dedicated herself for education of young opera artists. She worked as a didactic art director of As.Li.Co. of Milan between 1983-88 and was appointed by Maestro Riccardo Muti to run La Scala's School for Young Artists between 1997-1998. Gencer was the artistic director of the academy for opera artists formed in Teatro alla Scala where she taught opera interpretation.
Gencer performed leading roles in many famous operas and she is known as the 'last diva of the 20th century'. She achieved her strong presence in the opera world, not only by the variety of her repertoire, but also with the dramatic nuances that she attributed to the roles she performed. Being a good researcher and a teacher, she reintroduced many forgotten works of the romantic period to the opera stages. In 1996 she had a spectacular appearance in Jan Schmidt-Garre's film Opera Fanatic.
Gencer died on May 10, 2008 in Milan, Italy. Following the funeral service in San Babila Church and subsequently cremation in Milan, her ashes were brought to Istanbul and consigned to the waters of the Bosphorus on May 16, 2008 according to her wish.
Category:1928 births Category:2008 deaths Category:Burials in Istanbul Category:Italian High School Istanbul alumni Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Istanbul Category:State Artists of Turkey Category:Turkish female singers Category:Turkish opera singers Category:Turkish people of Polish descent
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One of the most remarkable female opera singers of the 20th century, she was dubbed La Stupenda by a La Fenice audience in 1960 after a performance of the title role in Handel's Alcina. She possessed a voice of beauty and power, combining extraordinary agility, accurate intonation, pinpoint staccatos, a splendid trill and a tremendous upper register, although music critics often complained about the imprecision of her diction. Her friend Luciano Pavarotti once called Sutherland the "Voice of the Century", while Montserrat Caballé described the Australian's voice as being like "heaven". Her highest note was a high F-sharp in altissimo. It was a breakthrough for Sutherland's career, and, upon the completion of the famous Mad Scene, she had become a star. In 1960, she recorded the album The Art of the Prima Donna, which remains today one of the most recommended opera albums ever recorded: the double LP set won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance – Vocal Soloist in 1962. The album, a collection consisting mainly of coloratura arias, displays her seemingly effortless coloratura ability, high notes and opulent tones, as well as her exemplary trill.
By the beginning of the 1960s, Sutherland had already established a reputation as a diva with a voice out of the ordinary. She sang Lucia to great acclaim in Paris in 1960 and, in 1961, at La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera. Also in 1960, she sang a superb Alcina at La Fenice, Venice, where she was nicknamed La Stupenda ("The Stunning One"). Sutherland would soon be praised as La Stupenda in newspapers around the world. Later that year (1960), Sutherland sang Alcina at the Dallas Opera, with which she made her US debut.
Her Metropolitan Opera debut took place on 26 November 1961, when she sang Lucia. After a total of 223 performances in a number of different operas, her last appearance there was a concert on 12 March 1989. During the 1978–82 period her relationship with the Met severely deteriorated when Sutherland had to decline the role of Constanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, more than a year before the rehearsals were scheduled to start. The opera house management then declined to stage the operetta The Merry Widow especially for her, as requested; subsequently, she did not perform at the Met during that time at all, even though a production of Rossini's Semiramide had also been planned, but later she returned there to sing in other operas.
During the 1960s, Sutherland had added the greatest heroines of bel canto ("beautiful singing") to her repertoire: Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, Amina in Bellini's La sonnambula and Elvira in Bellini's I puritani in 1960; the title role in Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda in 1961; Marguerite de Valois in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots and the title role in Rossini's Semiramide in 1962; Norma in Bellini's Norma and Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare in 1963. In 1966 she added Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, which became one of her most popular roles, because of her perfect coloratura and lively, funny interpretation.
In 1965, Sutherland toured Australia with the Sutherland-Williamson Opera Company. Accompanying her was a young tenor named Luciano Pavarotti, and the tour proved to be a major milestone in Pavarotti's career. Every performance featuring Sutherland sold out.
During the 1970s, Sutherland strove to improve her diction, which had often been criticised, and increase the expressiveness of her interpretations. She continued to add dramatic bel canto roles to her repertoire, such as Donizetti's Maria Stuarda and Lucrezia Borgia, as well as Massenet's extremely difficult Esclarmonde, a role that few sopranos attempt. With Pavarotti she made a very successful studio-recording of Turandot in 1972 under the baton of Zubin Mehta, though she never performed the role on stage.
Sutherland's early recordings show her to be possessed of a crystal-clear voice and excellent diction. However, by the early 1960s her voice lost some of this clarity in the middle register, and she often came under fire for having unclear diction. Some have attributed this to sinus surgery; however, her major sinus surgery was done in 1959, immediately after her breakthrough Lucia at Covent Garden. In fact, her first commercial recording of the first and final scene of Lucia reveals her voice and diction to be just as clear as prior to the sinus procedure. Her husband Richard Bonynge stated in an interview that her "mushy diction" occurred while striving to achieve perfect legato. According to him, it is because she earlier had a very Germanic "un-legato" way of singing. She clearly took the criticism to heart, as, within a few years, her diction improved markedly and she continued to amaze and thrill audiences throughout the world.
In the late 1970s, Sutherland's voice started to decline and her vibrato loosened to an intrusive extent. However, thanks to her vocal agility and solid technique, she continued singing the most difficult roles amazingly well. During the 1980s, she added Anna Bolena, Amalia in I masnadieri and Adriana Lecouvreur to her repertoire, and repeated Esclarmonde at the Royal Opera House performances in November and December 1983. Her last full-length dramatic performance was as Marguerite de Valois (Les Huguenots) at the Sydney Opera House in 1990, at the age of 63, where she sang Home Sweet Home for her encore. Her last public appearance, however, took place in a gala performance of Die Fledermaus on New Year's Eve, 1990, at Covent Garden, where she was accompanied by her colleagues Luciano Pavarotti and the mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.
According to her own words, given in an interview with The Guardian newspaper in 2002,
Sutherland had a leading role as Mother Rudd in the 1995 comedy film Dad and Dave: On Our Selection opposite Leo McKern and Geoffrey Rush.
In 1997 she published an autobiography, The Autobiography of Joan Sutherland: A Prima Donna's Progress. While it received generally scathing reviews for its literary merits, it does contain a complete list of all her performances, with full cast lists.
In 2002 she appeared at a dinner in London to accept the Royal Philharmonic Society's gold medal. She gave an interview to The Guardian in which she lamented the lack of technique in young opera singers and the dearth of good teachers. By this time she was no longer giving master classes herself; when asked why this was by Italian journalists in May 2007, she replied: "Because I'm 80 years old and I really don't want to have anything to do with opera any more, although I do sit on the juries of singing competitions." The Cardiff Singer of the World competition was the one that Sutherland was most closely associated with after her retirement. She began her regular involvement with the event in 1993, serving on the jury five consecutive times and later, in 2003, becoming its patron.
On 3 July 2008, she fell and broke both of her legs while gardening at her home in Switzerland. She completely recovered and attended a 2009 luncheon hosted by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace in honour of members of the Order of Merit.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, "She was of course one of the great opera voices of the 20th century," adding that Dame Joan showed a lot of "quintessential Australian values. She was described as down to earth despite her status as a diva. On behalf of all Australians I would like to extend my condolences to her husband Richard and son Adam and their extended family at this difficult time. I know many Australians will be reflecting on her life's work today."
In the Queen's Birthday Honours of 9 June 1975, she was in the first group of people to be named Companions of the Order of Australia (AC) (the order had been created only in February 1975). She was elevated within the Order of the British Empire from Commander to Dame Commander (DBE) in the New Year's Honours of 1979.
On 29 November 1991, the Queen bestowed on Dame Joan the Order of Merit (OM). In January 2004 she received the Australia Post Australian Legends Award which honours Australians who have contributed to the Australian identity and culture. Two stamps featuring Joan Sutherland were issued on Australia Day 2004 to mark the award. Later in 2004, she received a Kennedy Center Honor for her outstanding achievement throughout her career.
Sutherland House and the Dame Joan Sutherland Centre, both at St Catherine's School, Waverley, and the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre (JSPAC), Penrith, are all named in her honour.
John Paul College, a leading private school in Queensland, Australia, dedicated its newly established facility the Dame Joan Sutherland Music Centre in 1991. Sutherland visited the centre for its opening and again in 1996.
Category:1926 births Category:2010 deaths Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Music Category:ARIA Hall of Fame inductees Category:ARIA Award winners Category:Australian dames Category:Australian expatriates in Switzerland Category:Australian female singers Category:Australian people of Scottish descent Category:Australian of the Year Award winners Category:Australian opera singers Category:Australian sopranos Category:Companions of the Order of Australia Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Disease-related deaths in Switzerland Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Members of the Order of Merit Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Sydney Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists
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In 1964 Tourangeau won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. The same year, she sang Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro at the Stratford Festival under Richard Bonynge. During the 1965-66 season, she appeared as Carmen in fifty-six cities throughout North America with the Metropolitan National Company. Around that time, she began a partnership with Dame Joan Sutherland and Bonynge, both on stage and on record. She was heard in Seattle as Malika in Lakmé; London as Urbain in Les Huguenots; and San Francisco as Elisabetta in Maria Stuarda, Adalgisa in Norma, and Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus.
In 1967 and 1968, Tourangeau appeared with the New York City Opera, as Carmen. She made her formal Metropolitan Opera debut on November 28, 1973, as Nicklausse in Les contes d'Hoffmann (with Plácido Domingo in the name part), and later sang Dorabella in Così fan tutte (1975-76), Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro (opposite Justino Díaz and Judith Blegen, 1976) and Parséïs in Esclarmonde (opposite Joan Sutherland, 1976).
Tourangeau appears in Christopher Nupen's 1973 film Carmen: the Dream and the Destiny, which documents a production of the opera in which Placido Domingo plays Don Jose to her Carmen. In 1978, she was seen in the Met's televised performance of Don Giovanni, as Zerlina, which was her final role at that theatre.
Other notable roles included Bertario in Rodelinda, at the Holland Festival; in Semiramide (as Arsace) and Le roi de Lahore (as Kaled), at the Vancouver Opera; and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, at the Santa Fe Opera.
Tourangeau excelled equally in both light and dramatic roles, possessing a flexible mezzo-soprano adaptable to a wide range of repertoire, from bel canto coloratura trouser-roles to French lyric heroines. She was also regarded as an excellent singing-actress.
In 1977, she became the first recipient of the "Canadian Music Council" artist of the year, and was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in July 1997. Her husband, Barry Thompson, was manager of the Vancouver Opera (1975-78) and of the Edmonton Opera Association.
Category:1940 births Category:Living people Category:Canadian female singers Category:Canadian mezzo-sopranos Category:Canadian opera singers Category:Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal alumni Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos Category:Winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions
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Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:Austrian female singers Category:Austrian sopranos Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Innsbruck
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Gruberová was born in Bratislava in Slovakia, the daughter of a Hungarian mother and a father with German ancestors. Her native language is Slovak. She began her musical studies at Bratislava Conservatory where she was a student of Mária Medvecká. She then continued at Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU). While studying, she was a singer of the famous Lúčnica folk ensemble and also appeared several times in the Slovak National Theatre.
In 1968, Gruberová made her operatic debut in Bratislava as Rosina in The Barber of Seville. After winning a singing competition in Toulouse, she was then engaged as a soloist of the opera ensemble of the J. G. Tajovský Theatre in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, from 1968 to 1970. Since communist Czechoslovakia was going through a period called Normalization, during which the borders were closed with non-communist countries, Medvecká surreptitiously arranged for an audition for Gruberová in the summer of 1969 at Vienna State Opera, which immediately engaged her. The following year, she made her first major breakthrough when she sang the Queen of the Night. Gruberová then also made the decision to emigrate to the West. In subsequent years, she became a soloist in Vienna and was invited to sing at many of the most important opera houses in the world, especially in coloratura roles.
Gruberová made her debut at Glyndebourne in 1973 and at the Metropolitan Opera in 1977, both as the Queen of the Night. In 1977, she also first appeared at the Salzburg Festival, as Thibault in Don Carlo, under Herbert von Karajan. In 1981, she appeared opposite Luciano Pavarotti in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's film of Rigoletto. Gruberová made her Royal Opera House, Covent Garden début as Giulietta in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi in 1984. Other important roles she has sung include Zerbinetta, Gilda, Violetta, Lucia, Konstanze, Manon and Oscar; she sang Donna Anna at La Scala in 1987, Marie in La fille du régiment in 1987, Semiramide in 1992 at Zürich, Queen Elizabeth I in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux in Vienna in 1990. In 2003 she added title role in Norma to her repertoire, currently (2008/2009) running it in Munich.
Gruberová has made many recordings, most notably in recent years full-length recordings and extended selections from Donizetti's Tudor Queens trilogy and other bel canto operas, lately exclusively on Nightingale label. More than a dozen of her filmed and televised opera appearances have been released on DVD, including Norma, Manon, Beatrice di Tenda, Lucrezia Borgia, and Linda di Chamounix.
Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:Slovak female singers Category:Slovak opera singers Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Bratislava
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He then moved to Venice, where he concentrated on opera semiseria, of which Clotilde from 1815, is perhaps the best example. Accused of imitating other composers, and of producing too many uneven operas in great haste, he was eventually eclipsed by the emerging Rossini, and left for Lisbon, where he remained from 1820 to 1823. He then settled in London in 1824, where he was conductor at His Majesty's Theatre. In 1827, he wrote Maria Stuarda for Giuditta Pasta, which was successful.
Back in Italy, he concentrated on opera seria, and obtained some success with Caterina di Guisa, in 1833, but by then he had to compete with the likes of Donizetti and Bellini. Carlo Coccia contributed to a portion of Messa per Rossini, specifically the seventh section of II. Sequentia, Lacrimosa Amen.
He became Maitre de chapelle in Novare, in 1837, and director of the Music Conservatory of Turin, where he wrote his last opera in 1841. He died in Novare.
Category:1782 births Category:1873 deaths Category:Italian composers Category:Opera composers Category:Romantic composers
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Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet, Wagner, and Verdi, she was known 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 régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, and Violetta in Verdi's La traviata.
After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman 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.
At the age of three, Sills won a "Miss Beautiful Baby" contest, in which she sang "The Wedding of Jack and Jill". Beginning at age four, she performed professionally on the Saturday morning radio program, "Rainbow House", as "Bubbles" Silverman. Sills began taking singing lessons with Estelle Liebling at the age of seven and a year later sang in the short film Uncle Sol Solves It (filmed August 1937, released June 1938 by Educational Pictures), by which time she had adopted her stage name, Beverly Sills. Liebling encouraged her to audition for CBS Radio's Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, and on October 26, 1939 at the age of 10, Sills was the winner of that week's program. Bowes then asked her to appear on his Capitol Family Hour, a weekly variety show. Her first appearance was on November 19, 1939, the 17th anniversary of the show, and she appeared frequently on the program thereafter.
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, offering 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, and I absolutely loved the character, because Patience is a very funny, flaky girl.... I played her as a dumb Dora all the way through and really had fun with the role.... My Patience grew clumsier and clumsier with each performance, and audiences seemed to like her.... I found that I had a gift for slapstick humor, and it was fun to exercise it onstage." Sills sang in light operas for several more years.
On July 9, 1946, Sills appeared as a contestant on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts (radio). 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 1947, she made her operatic stage debut as the Spanish gypsy Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen with the Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company. 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 of 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 guests at the landmark Lewisohn Stadium with the noted operatic conductor Alfredo Antonini in an aria from Vincenzo 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 is profoundly deaf and has multiple sclerosis and Peter is severely mentally disabled. Sills restricted her performing schedule to care for her children.
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.
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 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 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. 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 Die lustige Witwe and Gian Carlo Menotti's La loca, a role written especially for her.
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 Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia (with Susanne Marsee as Orsini) and the same composer's Tudor Queens, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and 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 even . Down-to-earth and approachable, Sills helped dispel the traditional image of the temperamental opera diva.
From 1994 to 2002, Sills was chairman of Lincoln Center. In October 2002, she agreed to serve as chairman of the Metropolitan Opera, for which she had been a board member since 1991. She resigned as Met chairman 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. They would have had 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 that she didn't 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.
{|class="wikitable sortable" !Composer!!Opera!!Role!!In repertoire!!Performed with!!Recorded |- |Bellini||I Capuleti e i Montecchi||Guilietta||1975||Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Bellini||I puritani||Elvira||1972–1978||Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, Tulsa Opera||Yes |- |Bellini||Norma||Norma||1972–1978||Opera Company of Boston, Opera Theatre of New Jersey, Connecticut Opera, Ravinia Festival, San Diego Opera, San Antonio Opera||Yes |- |Bizet||Carmen||Frasquita||1951||Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company||No |- |Bizet||Carmen||Micaela||1952–1958||Charles Wagner Opera Company, Robin Hood Dell West, Cosmopolitan Opera||No |- |Bizet||Carmen||Carmen||1956||Musicarnival||No |- |Bizet||Les pêcheurs de perles||Leila||1956||DuMont Television Network||Yes |- |Boito||Mefistofele||Helen of Troy||1953||San Francisco Opera||No |- |Charpentier||Louise||Louise||1962–1977||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||Anna Bolena||Anna ||1973–1975||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||Don Pasquale||Norina||1978–1980||Opera Company of Boston, Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Diego Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||La fille du régiment||Marie||1970–1977||Opera Company of Boston, Carnegie Hall, San Antonio Opera, Philadelphia Lyric Opera, San Diego Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Edmonton Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Opera Memphis, Palm Beach Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||L'elisir d'amore||Adina||1964||Opera Company of Boston||No |- |Donizetti||Lucia di Lammermoor||Lucia||1968–1977||Fort Worth Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Edmonton Opera, Opera Company of Boston, New York City Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, La Scala, San Antonio Grand Opera, Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company, Covent Garden, Tulsa Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Mississippi Opera Association, Zoo Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, New Orleans Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Seattle Opera, Teatro Colón, San Francisco Opera, Opera Memphis, San Antonio Symphony, Florentine Opera, Opera Omaha, Metropolitan Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Lucrezia Borgia||Lucrezia Borgia||1975–1976||New York City Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Maria Stuarda||Maria Stuarda||1972–1974||New York City Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Roberto Devereux||Elizabeth I||1970–1975||New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Wolf Trap Opera ||Yes |- |Gounod||Faust||Marguerite||1963–1970||Boston Opera Group, New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Orlando Opera, San Antonio Grand Opera Festival, Duluth Symphony Orchestra||Yes |- |Handel||Ariodante||Ginevra||1971||Kennedy Center||Yes |- |Handel||Giulio Cesare||Cleopatra||1966–1971||New York City Opera, Teatro Colón, Cincinnati May Festival ||Yes |- |Handel||Semele||Semele||1967–1969||Cleveland Orchestra, Caramoor Festival ||Yes |- |Hanson||Merry Mount||Lady Marigold Sandys||1964||San Antonio Symphony||No |- |Hindemith||Hin und zurück||Helene||1965||WGBH-TV||Yes |- |Kálmán||Gräfin Mariza||Countess Mariza||1946||Hartman Theatre in Columbus, Ohio||No |- |Lehár||The Merry Widow||Sonia||1956–1965||Musicarnival, New York City Opera, Casa Mañana, Robin Hood Dell||No |- |Leoncavallo||Pagliacci||Nedda||1965||Fort Worth Opera||No |- |Lehár||The Merry Widow||Hanna Glawari||1977–1979||San Diego Opera, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera||No |- |Massenet||Manon||Manon||1953–1978||Baltimore Opera Company, New York City Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Teatro Colón, San Francisco Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia||Yes |- |Massenet||Thaïs||Thaïs||1954–1978||DuMont Television Network, San Francisco Opera, Metropolitan Opera||Yes |- |Menotti||La Loca||Juana La Loca||1979||San Diego Opera, New York City Opera||Yes |- |Meyerbeer||Les Huguenots||Marguerite||1969||Carnegie Hall||Yes |- |Montemezzi||L'amore dei tre re||Fiora||1956||Philadelphia Grand Opera Company||No |- |Moore||The Ballad of Baby Doe||Baby Doe||1958–1969||New York City Opera, Musicarnival||Yes |- |Moore||The Wings of the Dove||Milly Theale||1962||New York City Opera||No |- |Mozart||Der Schauspieldirektor||Madame Goldentrill||1956||New York City Opera||No |- |Mozart||Die Entführung aus dem Serail||Konstanze||1965–1975||Boston Opera Group, New York City Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Grant Park, Tanglewood Music Festival, Frederic R. Mann Auditorium, Ravinia Festival||Yes |- |Mozart||Die Zauberflöte||Queen of the Night ||1964–1967||Boston Opera Group, Théâtre de Beaulieu, Tanglewood Music Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Vienna State Opera, New York City Opera, CBC Radio||Yes |- |Mozart||Don Giovanni||Donna Elvira||1953–1955||San Francisco Opera, Chattanooga Opera Association||No |- |Mozart||Don Giovanni||Donna Anna||1963–1967||New York City Opera, Opera Company of Boston, Metropolitan Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Théâtre de Beaulieu, Baltimore Opera Company ||Yes |- |Mozart||Le nozze di Figaro||Countess||1965||Miami Opera||No |- |Offenbach||Les contes d'Hoffmann||Three Heroines||1964–1973||New Orleans Opera, Grant Park, Opera Company of Boston, Cincinnati Opera, New York City Opera, Baltimore Opera Company, Palacio de Bellas Artes, San Antonio Grand Opera, San Antonio Symphony, Shreveport Opera, Municipal Theater of Santiago, San Diego Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Florida Symphony ||Yes |- |Puccini||La bohème||Musetta||1958–1963||Cosmopolitan Opera, New York City Opera||No |- |Puccini||La bohème||Mimi||1965||Seattle Opera||No |- |Puccini||Gianni Schicchi||Lauretta||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Suor Angelica||Suor Angelica||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Il tabarro||Giorgetta||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Tosca||Tosca||1957–1960||Murrah High School Auditorium for the Jackson Opera Guild, Musicarnival|| No |- |Rameau||Hippolyte et Aricie||Aricie||1966||Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Rimsky-Korsakov||Le Coq d'Or||Queen Shemakha||1967–1971||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Romberg||The Student Prince||Kathie||1954||Chicago Theater of the Air||Yes |- |Rossini||The Barber of Seville||Rosina||1974–1980||Opera Company of Boston, San Antonio Symphony, New York City Opera, Kennedy Center, Fort Worth Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Festival Internacional Cervantino, Robin Hood Dell ||Yes |- |Rossini||Il turco in Italia||Fiorilla||1978–1979||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Rossini||The Siege of Corinth||Pamira||1969–1976|| La Scala, Metropolitan Opera||Yes |- |Johann Strauss II||Die Fledermaus||Rosalinda||1955–1980||Musicarnival, New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Johann Strauss II||Die Fledermaus||Adele||1977–1980||New York City Opera, San Diego Opera||Yes |- |Richard Strauss||Ariadne auf Naxos||Zerbinetta||1969||Boston Symphony Orchestra||Yes |- |Richard Strauss||Elektra||Fifth Maidservant||1953||San Francisco Opera ||No |- |Sullivan||H.M.S. Pinafore||Josephine||1945||Providence, Rhode Island at the Metropolitan Theater and Hartford, Connecticut at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium||No |- |Sullivan||The Pirates of Penzance||Mabel||1945||Hartford, Connecticut at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium||No |- |Suppé||Die schöne Galathee||Galatea||1965||Fort Worth Opera||No |- |Tchaikovsky||Cherevichki (performed under the title The Golden Slipper)||Oxana||1955||New York City Opera||No |- |Thomas||Mignon||Philine||1956||New York City Opera||No |- |Verdi||Aida||Aida||1954–1960||University of Utah football stadium, Paterson, New Jersey, Central City Opera|| Yes |- |Verdi||La traviata||Violetta||1951–1977||Kingston High School (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), Charleston Municipal Auditorium, Orlando Municipal Auditorium, Saenger Theatre, Duke University, Academy of Music, Erie Philharmonic Orchestra, Portland Civic Opera Association, DuMont Television Network, New York City Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Tulsa Opera, Cincinnati Opera, San Antonio Symphony, Grant Park, Teatro di San Carlo, Connecticut Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Opera Company of Boston, La Fenice, San Antonio Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Ravinia Festival, Palm Beach Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Wolf Trap Opera Company, San Diego Opera || Yes |- |Verdi||Rigoletto||Gilda||1957–1977|| Grant Park, Opera Company of Boston || Yes |- |Wagner||Die Walküre||Gerhilde||1953||San Francisco Opera||No |- |Weisgall||Six Characters in Search of an Author||Coloratura||1959–1960||New York City Opera||Yes |- |-class="sortbottom" |}
Sills also recorded nine solo recital albums of arias and songs, and was soprano soloist on a 1967 recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2.
She starred in eight opera productions televised on PBS and several more on other public TV systems. She participated in such TV specials as A Look-in at the Met with Danny Kaye in 1975, Sills and Burnett at the Met, with Carol Burnett in 1976, and Profile in Music, which won an Emmy Award for its showing in the US in 1975, although it had been recorded in England in 1971.
Some of those televised performances have been commercially distributed on videotape and DVD:
Others not available commercially include:
After her retirement from singing in 1980 up through 2006, Sills was the host for many of the PBS Live from Lincoln Center telecasts.
Category:1929 births Category:2007 deaths Category:American female singers Category:American Jews Category:American opera singers Category:American singers Category:American sopranos Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Category:Cancer deaths in New York Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Erasmus Hall High School alumni Category:Gilbert and Sullivan performers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish American musicians Category:Jewish classical musicians Category:Jewish opera singers Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Opera managers Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Brooklyn Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients
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