Il Destino di Bubbles: The Libretto of a Success Story

Prologue. Time, the early 1930s; place, Manhattan. A series of vignettes depicts the childhood successes of a little blonde from Brooklyn, Belle ("Bubbles") Silverman. At three, she sings and tap-dances on the Saturday morning children's radio program, Uncle Bob's Rainbow House. At seven, she joins the Major Bowes' Capital Family Hour. At eleven, she does 36 weeks as a singing mountain girl on the radio serial Our Gal Sunday, and performs one of radio's first singing commercials, "Rinso White, Rinso White, happy little washday song."

Act I. Time, 1953; place, apartment on Manhattan's Riverside Drive, which Bubbles, now 24 and known as Beverly Sills, shares with her mother Shirley. Alone in the living room, Beverly sings the despairing recitative, Where Has It Got Me?, and tells how she performed 63 Micaelas in 63 one-night stands of Carmen, and 54 Violettas in 63 nights of La Traviata. A messenger enters, bearing an offer from the Frankfurt Opera to star in La Traviata, Faust and Carmen for $125 a week. Over whelmed, Beverly sings the beguiling aria, To Frankfurt Will I Wander.

The fates have said it's right. And if my destiny should flounder, Then it's back to Rinso White.

Her mother sounds a note of caution in the impassioned duet, Bide Thee, Bubbles, in Brooklyn, but Beverly exits, resolutely waving her contract and singing Addio, West Side Subway.

Act II. Time, a year later; place, the stage of Manhattan's City Center. Beverly is about to perform her ninth audition for the New York City Opera. While waiting, she regales her colleagues with the bittersweet aria, I Only Lasted One Day in Frankfurt, and explains that because she found it a gloomy, unfriendly place, she returned to New York without having stepped foot on the Frankfurt stage. The audition now begins. Beverly walks to the front of the stage and sings Sempre Libera from La Traviata. Applause is heard from the pit, and it is obvious that she has finally captivated the City Opera.

Act III. Time, fall 1966; place, Lincoln Center. In her dressing room at the new home of the New York City Opera, Beverly is following the operatic custom of recalling events too numerous and complex to fit dramatically into a single scene. In the dazzling aria di bravura, Wasn't It Operatic?, she sings of her successful debut in Die Fledermaus in 1955, and of her subsequent leading roles in Faust, Don Giovanni and The Ballad of Baby Doe. A quartet of music critics, bearing bouquets of flowery superlatives, utters the rousing paean, These Tired Ears Lo at Long Last Rejoice. They praise Beverly's performance in The Tales of Hoffmann--in which she portrays all three heroines. They worship her Cleopatra in Handel's Julius Caesar, a role whose vocal acrobatics are so demanding that the opera is rarely performed.

Act IV. Time, last week; place, Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center. Bev erly has at last found her destiny. At 39, she is the New York City Opera's prima donna and clearly ranks as one of the two or three finest coloraturas in the world. At the New York Phil harmonic Promenade Concert, she sings a selection of Viennese arias and songs by Kalman, Korngold, Mozart and Richard Strauss, displaying a faultless voice that sweeps with elaborate embellishments to feathery, accurate high notes. The audience goes wild and demands an encore. From Santiago, Buenos Aires, Vienna and London come frantic pleas for concerts. Backstage, greeting her well-wishers, Beverly sings the obligatory arioso, I Can't Imagine Being Anything But an Opera Singer, while with contrapuntal verve, the joyous chorus adds the hallelujah-like Bubbles, Bubbles, Wasn't It All Worth the Troubles?

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