diva next door

as many folks know, i'm a big time fan of reneé fleming and i've talked at great length here about how much her persona appeals to me. in fact, i listed her as one of the models i might look to during my time in the classroom as i try to make plain to my students such mysteries as the vagaries of virginia woolf's claim that the sentence is a "thing made by men". fleming's openness, an almost sort of "girl next door" appeal, has won opera legions of new fans and her voice, with its lush colour and warm texture -- it reminds me at times of a favourite cashmere sweater, light but still able to keep off a chill -- has satisfied critics of classical singing who are quick to note when a diva is in decline.

before reneé fleming, however, there was beverly sills. sills was to opera in the 60s & 70s what fleming is to opera now. along with giving the seemingly impenetrable world of coloraturas & counter-tenors a human face, she worked tirelessly as a fund-raiser and artistic director for various organizations following her retirement in the 1980s. i was still a fairly green soprano when i discovered beverly sills, but there was something about both the quality of her voice and the sense of character that she brought to interpretations of such roles as bellini's norma that fascinated me. it would be nice to able to say that my technical progress shot forward rapidly after becoming a sills devotee -- that somehow, her voice unlocked the door to a blinding upper register. not the case (and that's all to do with my own shortcomings and nothing whatsoever to do with beverly). i *did however, pick up a lot about how to *perform a song from listening to her, and i became doubly aware of the way in which textual interpretation was at the heart of this. i can honestly say that listening to beverly sills has made me a better critical reader and literary scholar.

this morning, when the new york times popped up on my browser's homepage, a lump grew in my throat when i read that sills had passed away, at the age of 78, from inoperable lung cancer in her manhattan home. the article on sills in the times describes her as singing with "a vivid sense of text". i wholeheartedly agree.