Voice
Sills's voice has been described at the same time "rich, supple", "silvery", "precise, a little light", "multicolored", "robust and enveloping", with "a cutting edge that can slice through the largest orchestra and chorus," soaring easily above high C. Her technique and musicianship are very praised. Conductor Thomas Schippers said in a 1971 interview with Time that she had "the fastest voice alive." The New York Times writes that "she could dispatch coloratura roulades and embellishments, capped with radiant high D's and E-flats, with seemingly effortless agility. She sang with scrupulous musicianship, rhythmic incisiveness and a vivid sense of text." Soprano Leontyne Price was "flabbergasted at how many millions of things she can do with a written scale." Her vocal range, in performance, extended from F3 to F6, and she said she could sometimes hit a G6 in warm up.
Read more about this topic: Beverly Sills
Famous quotes containing the word voice:
“The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)
“Oh Science, lift aloud thy voice that stills
The pulse of fear,”
—Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)
“The only true madness is loneliness,
the monotonous voice in the skull
that never stops
because never heard.”
—John Montague (b. 1929)