(Posted this morning on the TONY Blog)

Today,
the music world mourns the loss of American opera singer, arts
administrator and public figure Beverly Sills, who succumbed to
inoperable lung cancer on Monday night at the age of 78. Born Belle
Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, the soprano known as Bubbles was far more
than one of America’s most admired classical-music performers: For a
time, she was the public face of opera in this country. She was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1971, and her numerous appearances on the Tonight Show
— not just as a guest, but as a substitute host for Johnny Carson —
made her the most recognizable figure in opera since Enrico Caruso.

Adding to Sills’s legend was the pluck that saw her become the house
diva at New York City Opera during the long years in which American
singers not trained abroad were unwelcome at the Metropolitan Opera. At
City Opera, she played a major role in the revival of bel canto works
by Donizetti, and was closely associated with the title role in
American composer Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe. Sills finally made her long-overdue Met debut in 1975, in Rossini’s The Siege of Corinth. It wouldn’t be the biggest role Sills would assume for the company — but that was still some years away.

In 1980, Sills retired from the stage, and began the second great
phase of her career. As an administrator, she became the general
director of New York City Opera, ushering in the supertitles that made
opera in foreign languages accessible to general audiences.

From 1994 to 2002, Sills was chairman of Lincoln Center. Following a
six-month “retirement,” she returned as chairman of the Met, a position
she gave up in 2005 to tend to the mounting needs of her family. Even
then, Sills couldn’t avoid the spotlight. In 2006, baritone Nathan Gunn
was named winner of the Met’s first annual Beverly Sills Artist Award.
This year, the honor went to mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, a singer
whose artistry, effervescence and charm pays the ultimate tribute to
Sills.

Operabloggers have been quick to pay their respects. Per classical blog-star Alex Ross’s survey, you’ll find a moving tribute at My Favorite Intermissions, a long list of operaphile tributes at Parterre Box, and a terrific collection of YouTube clips at The Standing Room.