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Beverly Sills: A Listening Guide through the Prime Years (II)

In a previous post, I led the reader through a series of recordings of Beverly Sills, taken from the prime years of her career, 1966 through 1970.  Those selections focused mostly on Mozart and Handel, with small side trips into Rossini and Gounod.  This, the second part of the article, takes the reader/listener from Meyerbeer to Richard Strauss to Donizetti (a complete performance of Lucia di Lammermoor), then back to Handel before winding up with something of a surprise.  Read more
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Beverly Sills: A Listening Guide through the Prime Years (I)

From my previous posts about soprano Beverly Sills, the reader has probably inferred that her all-too-brief prime can be pinpointed between September 27, 1966 (the night of her sensational Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare) to October 15, 1970 (the night of her first appearance as Elisabetta in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux.) During those four years, she gave performances that were about as good as any to be heard during the period, one during which Sutherland, Caballé and Scotto were at theirRead more