ON JULY 2ND, OUR COUSIN BEVERLY SILLS PASSED AWAY AFTER A SHORT ILLNESS.
MY
BROTHER BOBBY AND I REMEMBER HER WITH MUCH LOVE:
HER MEMORIAL SERVICE WAS HELD ON SEPTEMBER 16TH, 2007 AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA. HERE ARE PICTURES FROM THE EVENT:
PETER GELB
PLACIDO DOMINGO AND JAMES LEVINE
BARBARA WALTERS
CLIP FROM "SILLS & BURNETT AT THE MET"
CAROL BURNETT
CAROL BURNETT
ANNA NETREBKO
JOHN RELYEA
BEVERLY'S BROTHER STAN SILLS
CLIPS FROM "UNCLE SOL SOLVE'S IT"
NATHAN LEVENTHAL
JULIUS RUDEL
NATALIE DESSAY
HENRY KISSENGER
PHOTOS OF BEVERLY IN VARIOUS PRODUCTIONS:
HERE IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE PICTURES. I TOOK THIS WHEN WE WERE ON VACATION IN
JAMAICA, 1974.
I WAS SITTING IN OUR CAR AS SHE WENT SOUVENIR SHOPPING.
My
birth name is Kenneth Morse Schaffel, but I have used Morse all my professional
life. The name came from Beverly's
father, Morris Silverman, who was at the time of his death, my father's closest
uncle (my father’s mother, Belle's brother). Morris so loved his sister, my
nana, that he named his child after her (Beverly's birth name was Belle Miriam
Silverman....my grandmother was Belle.....very unusual for someone to name a
child after a living relative in the Jewish tradition!). My parents made my name
Morse as they thought it would be more "modern"
in the 50's than Morris....but I have worn my uncle's name proudly all these
years, and I maintained a closeness with my cousin Bubbly (which is also what
her mother called her… really only me, her mother and sometimes her brother
Stan would call her ‘Bubbly’.....everyone else in the family called her
"Bubs" or "Bubbles"). Whenever she would come to
California, we would dine or lunch, and I spoke to her last on Sunday, June
17th, one day before things took a turn for the worse. I had flown to NYC to see
her (which I didn't tell her why) as I knew she was not in good health....but
she was not feeling well enough to see me. But we spoke on the phone. She
said "call me when you get back to California....I'll be feeling
better".....always thinking about others even when she knew she was not well.
She
changed the world, she changed the arts, and she changed my life. She taught me
one of the most important things I ever learned….and I never forgot it.
It was the late 60's.....I was in my teens, and I went to the New York State
Theatre while she was doing the opera "Abduction From The Seraglio".
After the opera was over, I was sitting in her dressing room while she was
signing autographs for the huge line of fans. She would always do this!!
Now remember, she had just come offstage wearing 50 pound costumes, and she was
dead tired, but as long as there was a fan.....she was there for them.
They would all say "amazing.." "unbelievable.." and
every superlative there was. When the last one was gone, she closed the door,
turned to us in the room (her husband Peter was also there just waiting for her to finish
already), and she said..."what do they know, I was awful tonight!"
which taught me one of the most important lessons ever.....acknowledge the
accolades or jeers of others, but know yourself and live up to your
expectations of quality.....not someone else's. It was not that she was
hard on herself, quite the contrary. It was that she had a keen sense of good
and not so good, and worked hard to live up to her own levels of excellence,
which thankfully....was often.
Rest
in peace Bubbly. You were a force of nature and a national treasure.
THIS IS A PICTURE OF MY AUNT SHIRLEY (HER MOM) WHO I WAS VERY CLOSE TO
(HAVING BEEN NAMED AFTER HER HUSBAND MORRIS). AFTER MY MOM DIED IN 1973, AUNT
SHIRLEY BECAME A SURROGATE MOM TO ME. SHE WAS TALENTED AND BEAUTIFUL
ALL HER LIFE. MY COUSIN MUFFY (BUBBLES' DAUGHTER) WHO HAS
TAUGHT ME THE TRUE MEANING OF COURAGE AND GRACE. I LOVE THIS GIRL MORE
THAN I CAN SAY!...... AND AS I CALLED HER, BUBBLY (FROM 1988).
THIS IS ME AND MUFFY AT THE MEMORIAL
COUSINS: KENNY MORSE, MICHAEL SILLS, DAVID SILLS AND THEIR FATHER, STAN SILLS
AT THE MEMORIAL
FROM
THE NEW YORK TIMES:
July
4, 2007
APPRECIATIONS
Beverly
Sills
By
VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Whenever
I think of Beverly Sills, who died Monday at 78, I find myself imagining a
baseball player — New York-born, raised on the sandlots, rising through the
big leagues, M.V.P., Cy Young award — who then went on to become the
commissioner. I don’t think Ms. Sills ever played
much baseball, but I stand by the analogy.
She had
that kind of popular hometown importance to her sport, which was opera. For many
years, her singing career seemed to illustrate the tensions between the American
League of opera — that is, the New York City Opera, where she got her start
— and the National League — the Metropolitan Opera. And when she stopped
singing, she took over the whole shebang and made Lincoln Center her enterprise.
The force
of Ms. Sills’s personality, the extraordinary quality of her voice, the
powerful dramatic presence she created on a stage and the ease with which she
occupied her many public roles made her seem somehow inevitable. But there is
nothing inevitable about someone who excelled at the highest level of her art
and was able, at the same time, to make
audiences unfamiliar with opera feel as though they had access to it through
her. She represented her art as though she had been elected to the task, and she
took the job of representing it seriously. Just how seriously became apparent
when she became chairwoman of Lincoln Center.
In some sense, nearly the entire history of Lincoln Center has been entwined with Ms. Sills. It will be hard to imagine the place without her. When I first talked with her on the phone nearly a decade ago, she was even then threatening to step back into her private life. But it was an idle threat. There was never any emerita in her.
YOU CAN FIND AN AMAZING SELECTION OF VIDEOS ON BEVERLY SILLS ON WWW.
BEVERLYSILLS.COM AND ON WWW.
YOUTUBE.COM. CLICK ON THE PICTURE OF 7 YEAR OLD BEVERLY TO SEE HER ON
"UNCLE SOL SOLVES IT", AND YOU WILL SEE MANY OTHER SELECTIONS THERE
FROM HER WONDERFUL CAREER CAREER.
HERE ARE SOME OF HER QUOTATIONS THAT HAVE BECOME FAMOUS:
A happy woman is one who has no cares at
all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn't let them get her down.
A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the
individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to
permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.
Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.
Art is the signature of civilizations.
Attachment to spiritual things is... just as much an
attachment as inordinate love of anything else.
Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an
angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does
a candle's light.
Everything you need you already have. You are complete right
now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to
someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in
your thoughts as your own personal reality.
I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity... I didn't
feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important
whether everyone loved me or not - more important now was for me to love them.
Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.
I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the
caviar.
I've always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.
In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties
run into us.
My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick
to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not
bring about the righteous life that God desires.
My voice had a long, nonstop career. It deserves to be put to
bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it
can still do what it used to do. It can't.
So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't
remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment.
There are no short cuts to anywhere worth going.
There is a growing strength in women but it's in the
forehead, not the forearm.
You don't always get what you ask for, but you never get what
you don't ask for... unless it's contagious!
HERE IS OUR SILVERMAN/SCHAFFEL FAMILY TREE:
