A report on Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills

It was revived at the Royal Opera, London, in 1966 for Joan Sutherland.

On 13 February 1970, in concert at Carnegie Hall, Beverly Sills sang the first performance in New York since Lily Pons performed it at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1943.

Other celebrated singers who debuted at the Met during Bing's tenure include: Roberta Peters, Victoria de los Ángeles, Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, who had a bitter falling out with Bing over repertoire,, Birgit Nilsson, Joan Sutherland, Régine Crespin, Mirella Freni, Renata Scotto, Montserrat Caballé, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Anna Moffo, James McCracken, Carlo Bergonzi, Franco Corelli, Alfredo Kraus, Plácido Domingo, Nicolai Gedda, Luciano Pavarotti, Jon Vickers, Tito Gobbi, Sherrill Milnes, and Cesare Siepi.

In addition to complete operas and gala concerts, television programs produced at the Met have included: an episode of Omnibus with Leonard Bernstein (NBC, 1958); Danny Kaye's Look-In at the Metropolitan Opera (CBS, 1975); Sills and Burnett at the Met (CBS, 1976); and the MTV Video Music Awards (1999 and 2001).

The first staged performance in the US took place at the San Francisco Opera on 12 November 1971 with Joan Sutherland in the title role, while the first staged performances of the "Three Queens" operas together in the US took place in 1972 at the New York City Opera, all three operas staged by Tito Capobianco.

Presentations of the trio earned some degree of fame for American soprano Beverly Sills who took the starring role in each.

In the 1970s, Beverly Sills earned a considerable degree of fame when she appeared in all three of Donizetti's "Tudor" operas at the New York City Opera.

(She also made studio recordings of all three operas.) And Anna was one of the last new roles performed by Dame Joan Sutherland, at San Francisco Opera in 1984.

Notable exponents of the title role in the post-war period have been Maria Callas, Leyla Gencer, Joan Sutherland, and Montserrat Caballé.

Throughout the decade, four other bel canto specialists debuted their Normas: Radmila Bakočević, Montserrat Caballé, Beverly Sills, and Renata Scotto.

New York City Opera mounted several productions from the 1950s through the 1990s, including a lavish 1977 production starring Beverly Sills and Alan Titus with a new translation by Sheldon Harnick.

An Australian Opera production starred Joan Sutherland, and PBS broadcast a production by the San Francisco Opera in 2002, among numerous other broadcasts.

The first host was Leonard Bernstein in 1978, followed by Eric Sevareid in 1979 (with Gene Kelly closing it) and Beverly Sills in 1980.

2004 – Warren Beatty, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Elton John, Joan Sutherland, and John Williams

Lucrezia Borgia is often produced as a vehicle for a star soprano, including Leyla Gencer, Mariella Devia, Beverly Sills, Dame Joan Sutherland, Renée Fleming, Edita Gruberová and Sondra Radvanovsky.

Offenbach intended the four soprano roles be played by the same singer, for Olympia, Giulietta, and Antonia are three facets of Stella, Hoffmann's unreachable love. Similarly, the four villains (Lindorf, Coppélius, Miracle, and Dapertutto) would be performed by the same bass-baritone, because they are all manifestations of evil. While the doubling of the four villains is quite common, most performances of the work use different singers for the loves of Hoffmann because different skills are needed for each role: Olympia requires a skilled-coloratura singer with stratospheric-high notes, Antonia is written for a lyrical voice, and Giulietta is usually performed by a dramatic soprano or a mezzo-soprano. Any performance with all three roles (four if the role of Stella is counted) performed by a single soprano in a performance is considered one of the largest challenges in the lyric coloratura repertoire. Notable sopranos performing all three roles include Karan Armstrong, Vina Bovy, Patrizia Ciofi, Edita Gruberová, Fanny Heldy, Catherine Malfitano, Anja Silja, Beverly Sills, Sonya Yoncheva, Luciana Serra, Ruth Ann Swenson, Carol Vaness, Faith Esham, Ninon Vallin and Virginia Zeani. All four roles were performed by Josephine Barstow, Sumi Jo, Mireille Delunsch, Diana Damrau, Julia Migenes, Elizabeth Futral, Marlis Petersen, Anna Moffo, Georgia Jarman, Elena Moșuc, Joan Sutherland, Melitta Muszely, Olga Peretyatko, Patricia Petibon, Pretty Yende, Jessica Pratt and Nicole Chevalier.

In 1966, the New York City Opera revived the then virtually unknown opera seria with Norman Treigle as Cesare and Beverly Sills as Cleopatra.

There is also a 1963 recording of highlights with Margreta Elkins (Cesare), Joan Sutherland (Cleopatra), Monica Sinclair (Tolomeo), Marilyn Horne (Cornelia), Richard Conrad (Sesto) and Richard Bonynge conducting the New Symphonic Orchestra of London on Decca (coupled with a complete performance of Alcina).