Sills also had the most lachrymose timbre of any lyric coloratura soprano... it was so tearfully transparent which hurt her in dramatic roles, but in baroque it allowed her to draw her sorrow along the music line with exquisite beauty. All the ornaments too. Divine.
This is the first time that by chance I heard this aria interpreted by Beverly Sills, I am speechless, I am in shock, i have rarely heard something more beautiful and so well interpreted. This a magic moment... I understand now that it may never have been equalled. I just came to this aria from her: Oh! Quante Volte in Bellini's opera which she does better than all the other divas that I have listened to. Thank you for posting this jewel.
Did I type Bellini. Where was my head? I’m amazed I didn’t get called out on that. This role made her a star. Just as LUCIA did for Sutherland. What role made Callas a star? All of them?
Her Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare has never been equaled. She found a tragic dimension in the character - both through her acting and her singing - and allowed her to grow from spiteful girl to mature woman and great queen. A phenomenal performance. And the singing is extraordinary. Her V'adoro pupille always brings a tear to my eye.
This is elegant and simple yet nearly impossible to sing this softly as she ascends through the passagio. This is magnificent. Thank you for sharing. This is the best rendition I've ever heard of this.
Se pieta, my dear... There we have beauty, in every aspect of her singing. It's so important to keep noticing and appreciating such beauty. It's a rare miracle nowadays. She is so delicate in her interpretation, as if she has been lamenting, seeing the fragility and reflecting it with her voice. She had this cry-resembling colour in her voice which makes the whole aria even more heart wrenching
Such a shame (given her wonderful voice) that she restricted her singing(in the main) to the USA. This was her choice,to take care of her disabled children. This only makes me admire her more (than I did already for her singing) This is from Wikipedia:~ 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 (died July 3, 2016) was profoundly deaf and had multiple sclerosis; Peter, Jr. is severely mentally disabled. Sills restricted her performing schedule to care for her children.
I had the great honor of performing a duet with her when I was a young violinist. It changed my perspective, and it changed my life. I will love her always.
I LOVE this aria...particularly with Sills! Thank you SO MUCH, Lohengrin, for posting this! It really takes me back to my younger days, when in High School I used to check out the whole recording of the opera (the Treigle / Sills recording of course) from the local library and listened to it sooo many times...over and over! THANK YOU for this!
The cleanest coloratura technique I have ever heard. She could climb and descend a scale like no other. She could intorpolate at will and made it sound so effortless.
È sempre una magia...ascoltare una voce di grandissimo spessore...bellissima nei toni armoniosi....un vibrato delicato !! Il talento di Beverly Sill è pura arte... in una parola..è il canto delle Divine che t'inebria !! Un caloroso ringraziamento per Te LohengrinO 🎼🎼🎼🎼Elsa Asta.
No one sings this aria as beautifully as she does. I feel very fortunate to have seen her many times at the New York City opera (1968-1979). Alas, I did not see her in this opera.
InBoccaChiusa Me too! I saw her so many times at the City Opera and the Met. In her earlier years, her voice was utterly astounding; in her later years, she made up for the loss of vocal quality with her magnetic personality.
A lovely photo from the Metropolitan Opera (La traviata). I saw her many times, but not in this role. One of the great American sopranos of all time. Aveva una voce lacrimosa, piena di significato, molto commovente. Nadie ha cantado esta aria tan maravillosamente como ella y nadie la cantará de este modo. Bravissima!
I saw her do Traviata live with Domingo in Los Angeles, many years ago. She and Sutherland dominated my youth. It was nice to once in a while listen to Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett, Lucia Popp, Teresa Berganza, Kiri TeKanawa... For a brilliant moment the firmament exploded with a burst of light, and we thought Anna Souliotis would become the new Callas. Then the light went out. Not much later came Caballé, Jessie Norman... But Beverly Sills and her fabled "Lucia" and "Roberto Devereux" in NYC Opera always loomed large, when I felt more than I thought. This has brought back memories
Souliotis even in her prime was nothing when compared to Callas... and she was so unlucky to be led by idiots who didnt recognize how rare Callas was, into the Callas pathway which destroyed her voice within 2-3 years while singing 1/10 of the roles Callas sang in her prime (and who kept singing them for more than 20 years)
Alas! Her "Una macchia... è qui tutt'ora!" in the Macbeth recording she did with Fischer Diskau filled me at the time with enthusiasm for her low throaty Callas-esque drama, though looking back in retrospect, her voice was already beginning to sway suspiciously at the top notes (even if that, too, I wished to attribute to a Callas-like disregard for beauty in favor of drama...) How fast it all has gone!
There are three singers (in my whole life) that I fell TOTALLY in love with at first hearing..........Price, Streisand and Sills. I saw everything Sills did in NYC back in the day. She was beyond special. (In fact, I was a student in Boston and took the bus back to NYC for the opening of Devereux. A night I will never forget. Of course there are other singer I've grown to love...Callas, Verrett, Fitzgerald, Vaughn,Bassey, Monserrat even Katia! But these three.....love at first hearing!!!
I began my Voice journey with Barbra.... I still consider her the greatest non-operatic singer of the 20th century... UNBELIEVABLE talent not only vocal but musical... and it was all Natural, a Miracle pure.... Sills I love in some roles and she was a Virtuoso in her prime... Price she was great but no thank you... very boring
PS I forgot my fab brothers!!! The Great Vickers, Corelli (my boyhood hero as a young tenor) Milnes (AMAZING), Carreras (for ME the best of the three!) By the way, I TOTALLY agree with you about Streisand. I doubt there will ever be her equal .,like Callas, in my lifetime. But this thing you have about Price...you probably NEVER attended a Price recital.....CHURCH!!!!! As far from boring as you can get!!!!
Her version of "Casta Diva" is the most beautiful - and heartbreaking - ever recorded. It's on here somewhere. Look for it. (And no, her voice is not "too small" for the aria, she tears out your heart, which is what the song should do.)
ericscam2 I agree! Although a lot of people disagree because it was very different from the other great interpretations they’d heard. But I love the slow tempo and the way her voice floats on the air.
I love Beverly Sills to the Moon and Back. Her voice is so fresh and alive during the time this recording was made. I do think that RCA did a terrible job recording her for this recording. They did not know how to record Sill's voice. The mic was way to close. So much distortion and feedback on her high notes. (all of the singers in this recording actually) I am very grateful to have this recording. I just wish EMI or even London would have asked her to do another recording of it not long after this issue.
In Cleopatra Sills is transfixed into an angelic divine being. In these days I’m totally captured by her Handel works as well as her Pamina that we all reckon as her greatest achievements. Have you ever listened to the live version of 1968 directed by the great baroque specialist Karl Richter ua-cam.com/video/1cXy2Qs8vHU/v-deo.htmlsi=wk8lcvfPAANH5imD The long applause after this aria is well deserved. Thank you again for all your gems contained in your beautiful archive
It became fashionable at one point to dismiss Sills as a singer because she had become so visible and famous. BUT, go back to her early recordings and you’ll hear some of the most glorious and accomplished singing of any era. I was lucky enough to see her onstage (and even backstage!) many times in her best years, and unfortunately in her declining years too.
Not the first one... ua-cam.com/video/CPZh7i31LJ8/v-deo.html, ua-cam.com/video/v73Q2h0nBbw/v-deo.html Beverly belongs to this channel, the only reason I avoid posting her is because her fans are unbelievably toxic
Lohengrin O I would consider myself a fan of hers.... I don’t see how any fan base could be worse than the Gencer, Sutherland/Horne/Boynage, Tebaldi, or Netrebko fan base.
Lohengrin O oh yes how could I forget about the Flagstad fan base. AKA the person that would cut whole phrases with high notes in them. The main issue I have with the Sutherland base is that they support Boynage, they love Horne, and they don’t keep to themselves Gencer fans are the worst IMO. Ponselle fans are few and far between these days
Lohengrin O the more vocal ones are the ones I’m referring too. The other main issue I have is that their case for Sutherland as the best Norma includes all of two talking points which are 1. She sang Casta Diva in the “original key of G” 2. She sang the Eb at the end of In Mia Man. Both are stupid arguments.
Hi! Do you have any recordings from around 1953 (early '50s) of Maria Callas performing "Puritani" at the Teatro Comunale in Florence? I have just discovered that my grandmother has attended the performance back in day and I'm curious to hear Maria. Thanks!:)
Can this be your first Sills upload Lohengrin? I was always afraid of mentioning her name knowing you are a big Callas fan. My musical education came in stages. Sills was my gateway to the Romantic repertoire... Callas came almost last. "Getting" Wagner was last via Waltraud Meier's Liebestod. But Sills was the beginning of opera for me.
"Se Pieta" is a touching operatic lament, and Sills delivers a moving performance. Joan Sutherland sang this aria as well, and her rendition was just as touching in it's own way as Beverly's.
Sills is a favorite of mine! A true coloratura - rare indeed! I was doing chorus work in Rigoletto and Traviata in Boston - I wished she didn’t go into the dramatic coloratura roles (the queens) - she acted them so well - and I know she didn’t mind sacrificing her voice to do those roles - don’t get me wrong, she sang them well, they were out of her fach! She wanted to end her career on those “queens”! This perfectly suited her voice - no one sang Handel better!
completely agree... but she really wanted to sing Assoluta roles because although she had once said that Norma is easy to sing compared to the Queen of the Night (to get from Milanov the reply: Norma dear is easy the way YOU sing it), she knew that nothing is more difficult than the Assoluta repertoire... I respect ambition but I really dont like her Queens at all... an enormous struggle to support sound well in middle and low voice, hidden behind Roland Gagnon's re-written notes higher where she truly shone... and all that in order to destroy her voice? and not only Handel... she could have been THE coloratura in her chosen repertoire like she did as Pamira or Margeurite or the Tomboy or Lucia... anyhow even that way she left behind her a Legacy that will never die
Sills also had the most lachrymose timbre of any lyric coloratura soprano... it was so tearfully transparent which hurt her in dramatic roles, but in baroque it allowed her to draw her sorrow along the music line with exquisite beauty.
All the ornaments too. Divine.
...indeed
This is the first time that by chance I heard this aria interpreted by Beverly Sills, I am speechless, I am in shock, i have rarely heard something more beautiful and so well interpreted. This a magic moment... I understand now that it may never have been equalled. I just came to this aria from her: Oh! Quante Volte in Bellini's opera which she does better than all the other divas that I have listened to. Thank you for posting this jewel.
Georges Kopp one of the most beautiful interpretations of that Bellini area I had ever heard. Haunting. Her Baby Doe is also amazing.
Did I type Bellini. Where was my head? I’m amazed I didn’t get called out on that. This role made her a star. Just as LUCIA did for Sutherland.
What role made Callas a star? All of them?
How perfectly put. She could break your heart. Baby Doe final aria.
Her Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare has never been equaled. She found a tragic dimension in the character - both through her acting and her singing - and allowed her to grow from spiteful girl to mature woman and great queen. A phenomenal performance. And the singing is extraordinary. Her V'adoro pupille always brings a tear to my eye.
The very best Lyric Coloratura Soprano of the 20th Century! Thank you, Bubbles! We miss you!
Beverly Sills' Cleopatra propelled her to stardom, and this shows why. There was simply none better and there may well never be!
This is elegant and simple yet nearly impossible to sing this softly as she ascends through the passagio. This is magnificent. Thank you for sharing. This is the best rendition I've ever heard of this.
indeed it is
Se pieta, my dear... There we have beauty, in every aspect of her singing. It's so important to keep noticing and appreciating such beauty. It's a rare miracle nowadays. She is so delicate in her interpretation, as if she has been lamenting, seeing the fragility and reflecting it with her voice. She had this cry-resembling colour in her voice which makes the whole aria even more heart wrenching
Thank you, dear Sir Maestro Ponasenkov for this exquisite experience!
Best Violetta I ever saw. Her "Addio Del Passato" was magical.
Such a shame (given her wonderful voice) that she restricted her singing(in the main) to the USA.
This was her choice,to take care of her disabled children.
This only makes me admire her more (than I did already for her singing)
This is from Wikipedia:~
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 (died July 3, 2016) was profoundly deaf and had multiple sclerosis; Peter, Jr. is severely mentally disabled. Sills restricted her performing schedule to care for her children.
two children with problems wow
I had the great honor of performing a duet with her when I was a young violinist. It changed my perspective, and it changed my life. I will love her always.
I LOVE this aria...particularly with Sills! Thank you SO MUCH, Lohengrin, for posting this! It really takes me back to my younger days, when in High School I used to check out the whole recording of the opera (the Treigle / Sills recording of course) from the local library and listened to it sooo many times...over and over! THANK YOU for this!
The cleanest coloratura technique I have ever heard. She could climb and descend a scale like no other. She could intorpolate at will and made it sound so effortless.
È sempre una magia...ascoltare una voce di grandissimo spessore...bellissima nei toni armoniosi....un vibrato delicato !! Il talento di Beverly Sill è pura arte... in una parola..è il canto delle Divine che t'inebria !! Un caloroso ringraziamento per Te LohengrinO 🎼🎼🎼🎼Elsa Asta.
Some of the greatest singing I have ever heard. She had it all for this role. Just listen to the color of that voice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So moving and memorable! I love her so much.
No one sings this aria as beautifully as she does. I feel very fortunate to have seen her many times at the New York City opera (1968-1979). Alas, I did not see her in this opera.
I agree but Montsy comes very close
InBoccaChiusa Me too! I saw her so many times at the City Opera and the Met. In her earlier years, her voice was utterly astounding; in her later years, she made up for the loss of vocal quality with her magnetic personality.
A lovely photo from the Metropolitan Opera (La traviata). I saw her many times, but not in this role. One of the great American sopranos of all time. Aveva una voce lacrimosa, piena di significato, molto commovente. Nadie ha cantado esta aria tan maravillosamente como ella y nadie la cantará de este modo. Bravissima!
Voce lacrimosa!!
Absolutely gorgeous. The other divine singer in this aria is Leontyne Price - I posted an early live recording on my channel.
rank them, Leontyne, Montse, Beverly.. I prefer Beverly in this one than Montse
Lohengrin O I agree
Quelle ligne de chant ! Quelle sublime voix ! Quelle merveilleuse beauté ! Quelle tristesse d'eau et de sang ! Humains, priez ! ★
Beverly Sill's legendary agility is seconded only by her lyricism and exquisite legato floating us ever heavenward.
I saw her do Traviata live with Domingo in Los Angeles, many years ago. She and Sutherland dominated my youth. It was nice to once in a while listen to Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett, Lucia Popp, Teresa Berganza, Kiri TeKanawa... For a brilliant moment the firmament exploded with a burst of light, and we thought Anna Souliotis would become the new Callas. Then the light went out. Not much later came Caballé, Jessie Norman... But Beverly Sills and her fabled "Lucia" and "Roberto Devereux" in NYC Opera always loomed large, when I felt more than I thought. This has brought back memories
Souliotis even in her prime was nothing when compared to Callas... and she was so unlucky to be led by idiots who didnt recognize how rare Callas was, into the Callas pathway which destroyed her voice within 2-3 years while singing 1/10 of the roles Callas sang in her prime (and who kept singing them for more than 20 years)
Alas! Her "Una macchia... è qui tutt'ora!" in the Macbeth recording she did with Fischer Diskau filled me at the time with enthusiasm for her low throaty Callas-esque drama, though looking back in retrospect, her voice was already beginning to sway suspiciously at the top notes (even if that, too, I wished to attribute to a Callas-like disregard for beauty in favor of drama...) How fast it all has gone!
It's just marvellous !
Hermoso color de voz, técnica dominada, esa tonalidad tan barroca y esa impresión dramática. Es una bendición escuchar a esta mujer.
Thank you again Lohengrin O for another breathtakingly beautiful post. I had missed listening to this one.
There are three singers (in my whole life) that I fell TOTALLY in love with at first hearing..........Price, Streisand and Sills. I saw everything Sills did in NYC back in the day. She was beyond
special. (In fact, I was a student in Boston and took the bus back to NYC for the opening of Devereux. A night I will never forget.
Of course there are other singer I've grown to love...Callas, Verrett, Fitzgerald, Vaughn,Bassey, Monserrat even Katia!
But these three.....love at first hearing!!!
I began my Voice journey with Barbra.... I still consider her the greatest non-operatic singer of the 20th century... UNBELIEVABLE talent not only vocal but musical... and it was all Natural, a Miracle pure.... Sills I love in some roles and she was a Virtuoso in her prime... Price she was great but no thank you... very boring
PS I forgot my fab brothers!!! The Great Vickers, Corelli (my boyhood hero as a young tenor) Milnes (AMAZING), Carreras (for ME the best of the three!)
By the way, I TOTALLY agree with you about Streisand. I doubt there will ever be her equal .,like Callas, in my lifetime.
But this thing you have about Price...you probably NEVER attended a Price recital.....CHURCH!!!!! As far from boring as you can get!!!!
Perfection: exquisite ...just the best ever...thank you for posting...
Indeed this is better than Superba's which is also Magnificent
Such beauty...
Her version of "Casta Diva" is the most beautiful - and heartbreaking - ever recorded. It's on here somewhere. Look for it. (And no, her voice is not
"too small" for the aria, she tears out your heart, which is what the song should do.)
ua-cam.com/video/OUWTIgWNP6Y/v-deo.html and ua-cam.com/video/cUK1Vx1Qxnw/v-deo.html
ericscam2 I agree! Although a lot of people disagree because it was very different from the other great interpretations they’d heard. But I love the slow tempo and the way her voice floats on the air.
This is beautiful
I love Beverly Sills to the Moon and Back. Her voice is so fresh and alive during the time this recording was made. I do think that RCA did a terrible job recording her for this recording. They did not know how to record Sill's voice. The mic was way to close. So much distortion and feedback on her high notes. (all of the singers in this recording actually) I am very grateful to have this recording. I just wish EMI or even London would have asked her to do another recording of it not long after this issue.
Your comment causes me to want to investigate some remastered versions of her recordings.
Beverly Sills als Cleopatra in "Gulio Cesaro in Egitto" von Georg Friedrich Händel.
que maravilla!!!!! muchas gracias!!!!
Wow, here's the intensity of feeling and depth of musicality that's so totally absent in the Handel singing of Joan Sutherland.
Bev is Divine here but I don't agree about dame Joan's Handel
No ONE will ever sing Cleopatra like SILLS
So beautiful+++🌹
In Cleopatra Sills is transfixed into an angelic divine being. In these days I’m totally captured by her Handel works as well as her Pamina that we all reckon as her greatest achievements. Have you ever listened to the live version of 1968 directed by the great baroque specialist Karl Richter
ua-cam.com/video/1cXy2Qs8vHU/v-deo.htmlsi=wk8lcvfPAANH5imD
The long applause after this aria is well deserved. Thank you again for all your gems contained in your beautiful archive
she was defined by Alan Sanders as a marvel of New York City......................but I say she was a marvel all around
„Io ho sempre cercato di andare sempre un passo più in là ogni volta che le persone si aspettavano che mi fermassi.“B.S
GENIAL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Proud to follow you!!
u just saw this? it is DIVINE
Brilliant...
Awesome!
Did she ever sing anything more beautiful? I don't think so!
It became fashionable at one point to dismiss Sills as a singer because she had become so visible and famous. BUT, go back to her early recordings and you’ll hear some of the most glorious and accomplished singing of any era. I was lucky enough to see her onstage (and even backstage!) many times in her best years, and unfortunately in her declining years too.
Actually, her Cleopatra was mid-career.
I never thought I would see the day....
Not the first one... ua-cam.com/video/CPZh7i31LJ8/v-deo.html, ua-cam.com/video/v73Q2h0nBbw/v-deo.html Beverly belongs to this channel, the only reason I avoid posting her is because her fans are unbelievably toxic
Lohengrin O I would consider myself a fan of hers....
I don’t see how any fan base could be worse than the Gencer, Sutherland/Horne/Boynage, Tebaldi, or Netrebko fan base.
Lohengrin O oh yes how could I forget about the Flagstad fan base. AKA the person that would cut whole phrases with high notes in them.
The main issue I have with the Sutherland base is that they support Boynage, they love Horne, and they don’t keep to themselves
Gencer fans are the worst IMO.
Ponselle fans are few and far between these days
not all of them... many Sutherlandians also love Callas and do not like Bonynge at all... the more intelligent ones
Lohengrin O the more vocal ones are the ones I’m referring too. The other main issue I have is that their case for Sutherland as the best Norma includes all of two talking points which are
1. She sang Casta Diva in the “original key of G”
2. She sang the Eb at the end of In Mia Man.
Both are stupid arguments.
Divine
Wow!
Hi! Do you have any recordings from around 1953 (early '50s) of Maria Callas performing "Puritani" at the Teatro Comunale in Florence? I have just discovered that my grandmother has attended the performance back in day and I'm curious to hear Maria. Thanks!:)
Humains, priez ! ★
Can this be your first Sills upload Lohengrin? I was always afraid of mentioning her name knowing you are a big Callas fan. My musical education came in stages. Sills was my gateway to the Romantic repertoire... Callas came almost last. "Getting" Wagner was last via Waltraud Meier's Liebestod. But Sills was the beginning of opera for me.
check my reply to fclpjg and renew my Video Upload page in 10 minutes from now :D u must be Claire Voyant or something
Yes, belatedly read that post. Isn't synchronicity weird? :-)
check my 10sec old new post :D
I think she was right
"Se Pieta" is a touching operatic lament, and Sills delivers a moving performance. Joan Sutherland sang this aria as well, and her rendition was just as touching in it's own way as Beverly's.
Is this the first Sills clip that you have posted? Thanks for allowing me to savour her interpretation....
ofc not... her Palmira will probably never be surpassed: ua-cam.com/video/CPZh7i31LJ8/v-deo.html, ua-cam.com/video/v73Q2h0nBbw/v-deo.html
Oh! Must had slipped under my radar..will investigate it soon...
Lohengrin O ...AMEN!
What year?
I don't recognize this aria . Haendel ??
nathalie bonargent yes from Guilio Cesare, one of her greatest roles
Thanks a lot ! I wasn't sure...I don't know Haendel (just a little... but I try to listen more !)
nathalie bonargent This is called Se Pieta sung by the role of Cleopatra in Handel's opera 'Giulio Cesare' :)
Thank you N. Lidar for this precision, it helps me a lot !
Sills is a favorite of mine! A true coloratura - rare indeed! I was doing chorus work in Rigoletto and Traviata in Boston - I wished she didn’t go into the dramatic coloratura roles (the queens) - she acted them so well - and I know she didn’t mind sacrificing her voice to do those roles - don’t get me wrong, she sang them well, they were out of her fach!
She wanted to end her career on those “queens”!
This perfectly suited her voice - no one sang Handel better!
completely agree... but she really wanted to sing Assoluta roles because although she had once said that Norma is easy to sing compared to the Queen of the Night (to get from Milanov the reply: Norma dear is easy the way YOU sing it), she knew that nothing is more difficult than the Assoluta repertoire... I respect ambition but I really dont like her Queens at all... an enormous struggle to support sound well in middle and low voice, hidden behind Roland Gagnon's re-written notes higher where she truly shone... and all that in order to destroy her voice? and not only Handel... she could have been THE coloratura in her chosen repertoire like she did as Pamira or Margeurite or the Tomboy or Lucia... anyhow even that way she left behind her a Legacy that will never die
@@LohengrinO agreed!
No ONE will ever sing Cleopatra like SILLS