OTAS, you found it

I have to say the outpouring of grief from Beverly Sills’s death is amazing. All the major newspapers in the city had run huge tributes to the American Diva, Lincoln Center dimmed its house lights, the city’s flags were flown at half-mast, and full-page ads from the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Julliard School, New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, were published in the New York Times to mourn her. Even the Metropolitan Opera, who snubbed her for years, replaces its usual website with a tribute to her.

Yea, she was born in Brooklyn and made her career on New York’s stages, so that could be part of it – an important local dies. But my mother brought a paper from Fresno and there is a good two-page tribute to her with pictures not only from operatic productions, but her with Kermit, Tony Bennett, Randy Travis, and other popular icons. Mom then points to a full-page ad in the New York Times "Beverly Sills: 1929-2007" and says: "Now that's respect."

She was, the newspaper said, “the diva next door” and represented the can-do American spirit.

Sills was not a "diva", per se, to Americans. Sills was an inspiration.





Remembering Sills

Taking Opera to the Heights and Down to Earth (NY Times)
Lincoln Center Mourns (NY Times)
Beverly Sills, the All-American Diva, is Dead at 78 (NY Times)
Wanted: A New Cheerleader for Opera (NY Times)
Sills transcended opera stages (Fresno Bee)
Opera star Beverly Sills dies of cancer (Times Picayune)
La Sills sang and spoke to all of us (LA Times)
America's diva popularized high art (Chicago Tribune)
A Voice that Carried Weight (Washington Post)

You get the point. . . . the nation, rich, poor, urban, rural, pays homage to America's first primma donna and champion of the fine arts.

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