Beverly Sills (File Photo)

    BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Brooklyn-born opera diva Beverly Sills died about 9 p.m. Monday at her Manhattan home with her family and doctor at her side, said her manager, Edgar Vincent. She was 78.

    Long after the public stopped hearing her sing in 1980, Sills¡¯rich, infectious laughter filled America's living rooms as she hosted live TV broadcasts. As recently as last season, she conducted backstage interviews for the Metropolitan Opera's high-definition movie theater performances.

    Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, she quickly became Bubbles, an endearment coined by the doctor who delivered her, noting that she was born blowing a bubble of spit from her little mouth.

    In 1947, that same mouth produced vocal glory for her operatic stage debut in Philadelphia in a bit role in Bizet's "Carmen." Sills became a star with the New York City Opera, where she first performed in 1955 in Johann Strauss Jr.'s "Die Fledermaus." She was acclaimed for performances in such operas as Douglas Moore's "The Ballad of Baby Doe," Massenet's "Manon" and Handel's "Giulio Cesare," and the roles of three Tudor queens in works by Gaetano Donizetti.

    Her 1958 appearances as Baby Doe would become among her best known, in a tale of a silver-mine millionaire who leaves his wife for Baby Doe and eventually dies penniless.

    "I loved the role," Sills wrote in her 1976 autobiography. "I read everything that had ever been written about her. ... I absorbed her so completely in those five weeks of studying the opera that I knew her inside and out. I was Baby Doe."

    It was not until late in her career that she achieved the pinnacle, appearing at the Met, the nation's premier opera house.

    Her debut on that stage didn't come until 1975, years after she became famous. In her memoir, she said longtime Met general manager Rudolf Bing "had a thing about American singers, especially those who had not been trained abroad: He did not think very much of them."

    Described by former Mayor Ed Koch as "an empire unto herself," Sills sat on several corporate boards, including those of Macy's and American Express.

    Sills retired from the stage in 1980 at age 51 after a three-decade singing career and began a new life as an executive and leader of New York¡¯s performing arts community. First, she became general director of the New York City Opera.

    In 1994, Sills became chairwoman of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She was the first woman and first former artist in that position.

    After leading the nation's largest arts complex through eight boom years and launching a redevelopment project, she retired in 2002, saying she wanted "to smell the flowers a little bit."

    Six months later she came back.

    "So I smelled the roses and developed an allergy," she joked as she accepted a position as chairwoman of the Met. "I need new mountains to climb, which is why roses don't appeal to me."

    She also lent her name and voice to the Multiple Sclerosis Society; her daughter, Muffy, has MS and was born deaf.

    Sills¡¯compassion extended to her autistic son and to her husband, who lived with her at their home as his Alzheimer's disease progressed.

    A coloratura soprano, Sill's very high, light, floating voice made her for years the prima donna of the New York City Opera, achieving stardom with critically acclaimed performances in Verdi's "La Traviata" and Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor."

    Citing personal reasons, Sills stepped down as Metropolitan Opera chairwoman in January 2005, saying, "I know that I have achieved what I set out to do."

    In 1956, Sills married Peter Greenough, a journalist who later quit the news business to manage the family's affairs as his wife's career flourished. He died in 2006.

    After a whirlwind of performances in the early 1960s, Sills hit her stride as Cleopatra in Handel's "Julius Caesar" in 1966, when the New York City Opera officially opened its new home at Lincoln Center.

    "When the performance was over, I knew that something extraordinary had taken place," Sills wrote. "I knew that I had sung as I had never sung before, and I needed no newspapers the next day to reassure me."

    Abroad, Sills sang at such famed opera houses as La Scala and Teatro San Carlo in Italy, London's Royal Opera at Covent Garden and the Berlin Opera.

    Besides Greenough's three children from a previous marriage, the couple had two children of their own, Peter Jr. and Meredith.

    (Agencies)