I can't say that any version I've read of the Cleopatra story makes it seem like Sills did anything terrible. She had been singing steadily at City Opera, it was her home company. Curtin hadn't sung there in several seasons. Sills felt with some reason that it should have been offered to her. I can't blame her. In his memoir, did Rudel end up writing that she threatened to have her husband rent out Carnegie Hall for her to give a recital in which she would sing Cleopatra's arias? I thought that Sills told that story, but Rudel said that he didn't remember it that way. So I don't know what he ended up saying in his memoir.
Anyway, maybe she wasn't nice, but I can't blame her for being pissed about Cleopatra and threatening, at minimum, to leave the company. |
