Beverly Sills

American singer, a soaring lyric operatic soprano and later arts administrator for the City Opera and the prestigious Metropolitan Opera House in New York. A solidly trained child prodigy with enduring appeal, she was endowed with a superb voice, technical facility, and lively stage presence.

Sills was the third child and only daughter born to an insurance salesman and his wife, both of whom had immigrated to the United States. Her mother nicknamed her Bubbles when the infant emerged from the womb with bubbles in her mouth. With encouragement from her stage-struck mother, Sills sang on the radio for the first time at age four and became a regular on the children’s show “Uncle Bob’s Rainbow House.” By the time she was seven she could tap dance and could sing the 23 arias she had memorized from listening to her mother’s opera records. Both skills were useful for her ongoing role on “Major Bowes Capital Family Hour.” After a 36-episode gig on a radio soap opera as a “nightingirl of the mountains,” she left show business to concentrate on her studies. Bubbles had not even reached her teens!

After graduation from the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan where she studied voice, she began singing with touring opera companies, making her debut at age 17 in "Carmen." She would later comment: “I had my first high heels, my first updo hair style, my first strapless dress, and I didn’t know what to hold up first.”

Sills joined the New York City Opera in 1955 and met her husband Peter Greenough, a newspaperman, while she was on tour. After their marriage on November 17, 1956, Sills took over as stepmother for his three daughters over whom he had custody. Their family grew with the birth of the couple’s daughter Meredith, nicknamed Muffy, on August 4, 1959, and their son, Peter Bulkeley Greenough, Jr., nicknamed Bucky, on June 29, 1961. When their son was six months old, Sills and her husband received two sucker-punch diagnoses.