Sunday, August 29, 2010

Beverly Sills on TV

Gentle readers--and the rest of you lot--today I bring to you dear Beverly Sills, specifically some of her television appearances. Bubbles was a frequent guest of The Tonight Show (back when it was watchable), and all of these clips are from appearances there. Wikipedia (see link) states:
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 appeared on The Muppet Show. Down-to-earth and approachable, Sills helped dispel the traditional image of the temperamental opera diva.

"Italian Street Song", 1975


"Son vergin vezzosa" from I Puritani, 1973


"Vilja", 1974


Polish folk song "Mother Dear", 1980, toward the end of her singing career. We know she had a few careers after singing! I believe she liked to end her concerts with this song. I think this arrangement is by her long-time voice teacher and mentor, Estelle Liebling. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

1 comment:

Bearfuz said...

I well remember her appearance on "The Muppet Show": They were doing the "grand opera Pigoletto" and she tried several times to launch into "Sempre libera" only to be interrupted again and again by Miss Piggy. That's really all I remember. I adored her.