A Crown for Good Queen Bev

The Met may be mighty, but the New York City Opera has Beverly Sills. In 1966 she became a top star overnight, singing the coloratura role of Cleopatra in Handel's Julius Caesar. She repaid City Opera by becoming the bestselling box-office draw in its 34-year history. Last January, when Sills, 49, announced that she would end her singing career in 1980, she promised that she would stay on at City Opera--as co-director with Julius Rudel, 57, her mentor and director of the company for 21 years. Last week "Good Queen Bev," as Rudel has called her since her smashing performances in Donizetti's royal trilogy (Roberto Devereux, Maria Stuarda, Anna Bolena), took on the biggest and riskiest role of her career. Next July she will become the company's sole director: Rudel has decided to devote all his energies to conducting.

The transition may be bumpy at first.Sills, a charmingly mettlesome Norina in the Met's effervescent new production of Don Pasquale, has a full performance schedule through 1980. She will cut back. But some promises may be impossible to break, such as the San Diego Opera premiere next June of a new opera written for her by Gian Carlo Menotti. Sills has little administrative experience, but she has a sharp, well-organized mind. During the past seven months, she has spent every free moment trailing the City Opera managing director. Says she: "I have learned everything: how subscriptions work, how to read cash-flow statements, what makes the company tick. My head is so full of plans and ideas that I can't wait to get cracking."

The speed of the transition surprised the musical world and started speculation that Rudel had quarreled with City Opera's board of directors. The company has had some sour notes in recent years. A deep financial crisis--now successfully surmounted--threatened at one point to close the house. Performances have often been slipshod lately, the casting haphazard. Rudel, although tireless, has been away from the house more and more on conducting engagements; he has accepted the directorship of the Buffalo Philharmonic beginning next fall.

Along with City Opera's problems, however, Sills will inherit a healthy, adventurous tradition. Under Rudel, the company staged early operas like Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea and such rarities as Janacek's The Mahropou-los Affair and Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d 'Or. It has nurtured young singers, mostly American--including, on their way up. Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Donald Gramm and Placido Domingo. "Rudel did interesting operas and developed interesting singers," says Anthony Bliss, executive director of the Met. "It is no mean achievement."

Sills plans to keep the company mostly American and to scout Europe for expatriate talent. Says she: "If I had the career I did, educated and working in America, why can't others?" She also hopes to continue producing works that are seldom staged. "I want to get to the point where, with the exception of a few bread-and-butter operas like Butterfly and Boheme, we have no crisscrossing of repertory with the Met," says Sills. "We shouldn't be the second company in New York; we should be the other company, the different one."

A formidable fund raiser ($1 million since joining the board last year). Sills has the glamour and now the position to attract backing for City Opera. Says Tito Capobianco, general director of the San Diego Opera: "At this moment, the City Opera is asleep. Beverly will put new life there. She is magnetic." As a singer. Sills could command the stage with a trill. She may prove as great a star in the wings.

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