Beverly Sills passed away on July 2, just four weeks after discovering she had lung cancer. She did more for opera in the United States than any other person – she brought a friendly face and a sparkling personality…not to mention a beautiful high soprano that supported her prodigious gift as an actress. For most opera people of my age, she was an inspiration. I used to keep a photo of Beverly in my wallet as encouragement. There are so many stories of how wonderful Beverly was – and she told the best stories herself, always with her infectious chuckle. I will never forget a Lucia she sang, and I was the hapless Arturo, the one she is forced to marry and stabs to death on their wedding night. Backstage as she prepared for the mad scene, she didn’t feel she had enough blood on her nightgown, so when she saw me, she thought it only appropriate that I splash on “Arturo’s” blood. We got the giggles doing this, and I think we went overboard. She said it was the bloodiest mad scene she ever did. I had the great privilege of performing with Sills in I Puritani, Siege of Corinth, Thais and Traviata and even had a small part in Sills and Burnett at the MET. Then as I went off into my administrative career, we shared the trials and tribulations of running companies. But I’ll always remember her ability to laugh.
The next loss was a deeply personal one for me – my dear friend Jerry Hadley. Jerry and I crossed paths many times over the past 30 years. Much like Beverly, Jerry always had a smile on his face and a joke to tell. In fact, every single thing I’ve seen written about him lately mentions his jokes – usually a bit off color, but hilarious and often told with an accent. My favorite memory is of driving through the Lammermuir hills south of Edinburgh with a car full of opera singers (Jerry Hadley, Fred Burchinal, Erie Mills and Luvenia Garner). We had all been hired to do Lucia in Tulsa later that year and were soaking up local color and history. Many times on that trip I nearly drove off the road as we were howling with laughter at Jerry’s Scottish jokes, told in full brogue.
The last few years were difficult for Jerry. There was his arrest for DUI in New York (the charges were eventually dropped) and he confided in me that he was filing for bankruptcy and was taking medication for depression. He also had some pretty severe family problems stemming from a bad divorce. The last email I got from him, in March, he sounded very depressed, but looking forward to singing in Australia. I told him how loved he was by so many people and how much joy he still had in him — and had coming to him. But I guess those were things he was no longer able to believe. I don’t know what led him to this inescapable despair, to this sense that things were so very bad that they could never, ever get better. I guess we never will know. He left far too many songs unsung. I’ll never forgive him for leaving us so very prematurely. And I’ll never stop missing him.
French Dramatic Soprano Regine Crespin also left us in July. I’d heard of her, but never saw her until she took over the role of Carmen at the MET in the 70’s. After all the great Carmen’s I’d seen and heard, this was the first time it really dawned on me that Carmen was a French opera. One opera with which she is indelibly associated is Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. She sang the role of the New Prioress in the French premiere of the work in 1957; 30 years later, she played the Old Prioress. One of my jobs at the MET was to play one of the “nuns” with the express purpose of removing the bed, including the Prioress (Crespin), after her riveting death scene. On one performance, a tear gas bomb was detonated in the lobby, and the MET had to be cleared. Backstage, all of us filed out – the police looking very suspiciously at these four, big burly nuns. Crespin quipped something about the fact that these “girls” were so ugly they had no choice but to join the convent. Again, humor was never very far from Crespin. A superb artist whose diction in German, French and English was impeccable and who became a valued teacher in her later years, after a career that included all the major Wagner and Strauss soprano roles, then switching to dramatic mezzo roles in the late 1970’s. Among Crespin's important recordings are the Marschallin in Rosenkavalier (with Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic), Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été and Ravel's Shéhérazade (with Ernst Ansermet and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande), and two different roles in Wagner's Die Walküre: Sieglinde (with Solti and the Vienna) and Brünnhilde (with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic).
In later life she was a widely respected teacher: She was on the faculty of the Paris Conservatoire from 1976 to 1992 and gave master classes across the world. She was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, and a special hybrid rose was created in her honor in 1990.
Late in July, the opera world was saddened by the death of American soprano Teresa Stich Randall – an artist whose primary career was in Europe. In fact, she was the first American singer to be named an Austrian Kämmersängerin. Sadly, I know nothing about the humerous side of Ms. Stich Randall, but it almost seems like one would need a sense of humor to last in this business!- The Opera Doc (William Russell, Executive Director)
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