By Nicole Breskin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER EAST SIDE — To many New Yorkers, Beverly Sills was "America's queen of opera." Now, they have a chance to bring a piece of that royalty into their homes.
An Emmy Award and a bronzed costume helmet are just two of the hundreds of items that belonged to Sills that are being auctioned Wednesday morning at Doyle New York auction house on the Upper East Side.
“This is a very special collection,” said Louis Webre, a spokesperson for Doyle. “Beverly Sills was a much beloved New Yorker with wonderful taste.”
Sills was also known for her role as chairman of Lincoln Center, and later of the Metropolitan Opera. She died in 2007 of lung cancer.
Her 460-item estate includes ornate furniture, colorful paintings and rare opera memorabilia.
The collection is valued at more than $500,000, according to Doyle. It had been housed at the New York City-born soprano's Central Park West apartment in the Beresford hotel on the Upper West Side. Profits from the auction will go to Sills' family.
A 1980 drawing by Colombian artist, Fernando Botero, called "A Family," is expected to draw the highest price at an estimated $20,000-$30,000.
Webre said he wouldn’t be surprised if an unexpected item drew a higher bid from an avid Sills fan.
Emmy Awards are usually not allowed to be sold by winners or their heirs. But Sills' 1975 primetime Emmy Award for outstanding classical music program for her “Profile in Music” documentary was granted an exemption by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for the auction.
The original costume designs for Sills' famed 1968 performance as Cleopatra in “Julius Caesar” and as Pamira in the “Siege of Corinth” for her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1975 are also for sale.
The most valuable memorabilia up for grabs for Manhattan vocal coach Gerald Martin Moore is Sills vocal score sheets.
“To have access to her notes of vocal ornamentation is most exciting,” said Moore, who coaches top opera sopranos Renee Flemming and Natalie Dessay, at an early preview exhibition on Tuesday. “It has a lot of personal value.”
Elisabeth Poliacoff, a 71-year-old retired financial manager who loves opera, is not planning to purchase anything at the auction, but she enjoyed scoping out the items.
“The pleasure of seeing something of Beverly Sills so close up is something I’ll only experience once in my life,” she said. “I don’t think we’ll see the likes of her in opera again.”
