Word: debuted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Sills, the Met debut is a major event in her career, but not in the way it would seem. She's already a superstar, so the Met's belated recognition of her is a slight anticlimax. This production of Siege, mounted in 1969 for the centennial of Rossini's death, was the vehicle for her debut at La Scala in Milan; even then she had already been acclaimed as one of the greatest coloratura sopranos of this century. The production was so successful that the Met bought it and signed its first contract with Sills--that bastion of complacent conservatism...
...refused contracts solely out of righteous indignation for not having been appreciated earlier. Recently she's become pretty candid about what was actually in those contracts: insultingly poor roles, old productions, or performance dates that Bing knew conflicted with her commitments to sing elsewhere--in one instance, her debut at Covent Garden...
...shragging her shoulders, gesturing and mugging comically into the wings, making everyone laugh but Schippers, who never laughs. It seemed that she was clowning on purpose, to make the rehearsal less tedious--behavior entirely consistent with a personality so generous and secure that she was willing to share her debut with another female singer whose vocal abilities are as prodigious...
...Cenci in Ginastera's Beatrix Cenci--didn't take place at the Met: Beatrix Cenci opened the Kennedy Center in 1972 and ran for two years at the New York City Opera. The role of Maometto, which he sang at La Scala with Sills in 1969 for his own debut there, is another crucial triumph--his career is well-established internationally but still on the rise. As for the Met, he says, "My position here, of course, is not really steady. I'm not like a weekly artist--I go wherever the jobs are. I just keep travelling and wherever...
Sills is contracted at the Met through 1977. Diaz will probably be there as long as he chooses to stay. Diaz's career is proof that the Met system has been basically a meritocracy in the past; Sills's debut now demonstrates that general manager Schuyler Chapin has made it a more perfect...