Great Recordings

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Music reviews of Great Recordings

Music Review: Viva Beverly: Her Greatest Hits
Rating: 5 Stars

Beverly Sills won international acclaim as an opera legend in 1964 with her performance as Cleopatra. She moved on to sing all three Hoffman heroines -we get to hear arias from Tales Of Hoffman on this album. She sang The Queen Of The Night in Mozart's Magic Flute, Lehar's Merry Widow, whose aria is also on this recording, as well as the ever popular concert aria "Wien Wien" a favorite of Elisabeth Schwartzkopf. Beverly Sills has a light instrument, but her flute voice can definately impress and when singing with dramatic power she can truly electrify. Her coloratura is the best in the business. Her spiraling roulades and cadenzas, free vocal glissando up and down scales and octaves are mesmerizing. Her control of breath and lyrical splendor enables her to sing the long bel canto lines so standard of the operas of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini. From 1969-1975, Sills reached the peak of her career and her vocal glory with the difficult and demanding roles of Donizetti's Three Tudor Queen trilogy- Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux. As Queen Elizabeth I in Roberto Devereux, she was unsurpassed. Here in this album is the finale to that opera.

She sings here the best of all the bel canto- Rossini's Barber Of Seville, whose Rosina was a role she made entirely her own, Juliet in Bellini's Montagues and Capulets, which after an orchestral introduction, she sings with the most melancholy sweetness. The duet "Mira O Norma" from Bellini's Norma is here, and has never been recorded on to a disc before. Sills performed the role of Norma numerous times to great success and recorded it once for LP opposite Shirley Verrett as Adalgisa. The role of Norma may be written for a giantess' voice such as Callas or Sutherland but Beverly Sills produces a noble, intimate portrait of Norma and stands her own in the role. Beverly Sills. The truly unique and wonderful diva of the 20th century. She is in her seventies now and chairman at New York City's Metropolitan Opera. Her legacy lives on, eternally, as hopefully newer recordings are made into compact disc like the entire Norma hopefully one day on cd.

Description of Great Recordings

Classical CDs

• Music > Styles