Oberon's Grove: The Snowstorm Crew

I can't remember now exactly when it started but sometime during the Autumn season of 1969 at the New York City Opera, the Beverly Sills Snowstorm Crew was formed. It began as a spontaneous gesture: a group of her loyal young fans spent intermissions shredding programmes and when she stepped before the curtain to bow at the end of the opera we tossed enormous quantities of paper confetti from the front of the 5th Ring. We then raced to the stage door to see what effect our efforts had on our favorite soprano. Did she like it? "Yes, but Julius says I have to stay late and sweep it all up!"

For five or six years starting with her sensational Cleopatra in Handel's GIULIO CESARE (1966) a group of us were among the demented vanguard of the enormous Sills fan club which eventually included everyone in the USA (even my mother) and most of the rest of the known world. Night after night our beloved nightingale came out and trilled and spun her way through everything from Queen of the Night to the HOFFMANN heroines. We could not get enough of her roulades and her spectacular forays in alt.

{In fact, I had seen Beverly before she became BEVERLY; she sang Rosalinda in FLEDERMAUS when NYCO toured to Syracuse a year before her big break. I remember her dazzling high notes and splendid bosom.}

Constanze, Donna Anna, Marguerite in FAUST, Manon...she drove us to distraction. In 1969 an ultra-complete LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR was mounted for her in which not just the soprano but her male colleagues added fiorature and cadenzas to their vocal lines. On the opening night, Beverly had a 103 degree fever but sang anyway and took five solo bows after the Mad Scene while we buried her in our biggest snowstorm ever. During the run of performances she had fun slightly varying her ornaments on each night.

One special evening was her return to the title role of Douglas Moore's BALLAD OF BABY DOE; it was a birthday present for her mother who wanted to hear her sing the role again. The Willow Song that night was beyond ravishing and in the midst of our snowstorm we launched a rousing chorus of 'Happy Birthday Mrs. Silverman!" while Beverly beamed up at us from the stage. Here she is with her Mama and daughter Muffy, photographed by one of the faithful, Bill Hendrickson.

"Close, but no cigar!" we used to joke with her after every show; and then once after the most magical St. Sulpice scene in Massenet's MANON in which the Sills pianissimi seduced an entire theatre, we ran out at intermission and bought her a cheroot. After yet another huge curtain-call blizzard we rushed backstage to tell her for the hundredth time how much we loved her. She good-naturedly popped the cigar in her mouth for my camera while word trickled down the line of autograph seekers that Beverly's crazy fans had surpassed themselves. However, I think our best effort came when we all went to the five & dime before a matinee and bought those small bottles of soap bubbles with the little plastic blowers inside. We perched outside the stage door and filled the air at what is now Jerome Robbins Place with millions of bubbles prompting the real Bubbles to cry, as she stepped out of her cab: "You bunch of nuts!"

In the days before e-mail and cellphones, we gathered at one Crewman's apartment waiting for a trans-Atlantic phone call on the morning after Beverly's La Scala debut in Rossini's L'ASSEDIO DI CORINTO. We were furious when the caller read one review to us that referred to the Sills instrument as "una vocina" ("a little voice") and were thrilled a few days later when the tapes arrived, full of some of the most remarkable singing we ever heard. Beverly sent me the photo of herself as Pamira a week later, remarking in her letter that she missed her snowstorms at Scala but was getting plenty of roses.

She sometimes sent little postcards, or she jotted notes to me and sent them via friends. Here's a couple of them that I have saved; they remind me so much of that carefree time and of the heyday
of the all-American diva. Like every other heyday, it was doomed to end and it did so sooner than I would ever have imagined.

By 1972 my diaries were beginning to be full of comments about the Sills tone being dry and metallic. Her unstinting vocalism in the Donizetti Tudor trilogy took a heavy toll on her instrument in my view, though the results were exciting to be sure. Slowly I began to feel that the edgy and increasingly unsupported quality of her singing and her tendency to flatten in mid-range were offsetting any joy I might derive from listening to her. Hearing her Met broadcast of L'ASSEDIO DI CORINTO was so painful for me, such a pallid and bitterly disappointing shadow of her Scala performance just a few years earlier.

To my mind there were several factors affecting her decline. Her success had come quite late in a long career; she was already forty when she made her splash as Cleopatra and had sung for two decades. When she hit the big time, NYC Opera cashed in on her success and she sang three or four nights a week for 5 or 6 years; on her off nights she would pop out to Boston or DC and sing concerts. She would get on TV with Carson or Cavett and gab away endlessly. All this put a lot of mileage on her cords. Her brutally self-abusive vocal approach to one of her greatest roles, Elisabetta in ROBERTO DEVEREUX, wore several layers of velvet off the tone each time she sang it. By 1975 she was sounding so ravaged that I wrote to her suggesting she either retrench or retire. Needless to say, that was the end of our correspondence.

Her recent death of course brought back memories of all this; I find it quite amusing when people cite various of her post-prime performances as representative of her standards. Hardly any of her commercial recordings give a really satisfying idea of what she sounded like though some of them are OK. You really have to turn to things like her Scala debut or her phenomenal FILLE DU REGIMENT from Carnegie Hall on February 13, 1970 (both these performances are available on the Opera D'Oro label) to hear what it was that drove audiences to the brink.

Comments

Philip, thanks so much for posting those pictures & letters. It's a huge loss for Lincoln Center & opera. May she rest in peace.

Posted by: Nicole | July 25, 2007 at 12:08 PM

What a touching remembrance, thank you for sharing it. I only saw her once, and not until her Met days. I had no knowledge of opera and certainly couldn't evaluate her voice, but she made a big impression on me and was a great ambassador for opera. In fact, she was a great ambassador for all the arts.

Posted by: Susan | July 25, 2007 at 05:54 PM