In 1979, one of the world's most decorated operatic sopranos stood on the set of The Muppet Show in a sparkling gown, laughing through a high-note contest with Miss Piggy. This episode traces the extraordinary life of Beverly Sills, born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn in 1929, from a five-language-speaking child radio star nicknamed Bubbles to an international opera powerhouse and a fiercely effective arts executive.

We follow her grueling teenage tours in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, her 1951 operatic debut in Carmen, and the devastating diagnoses of her two children that nearly halted her career. We explore how that grief deepened her lyric coloratura voice, how her 1966 Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare made her a global star, and how Metropolitan Opera manager Rudolf Bing locked her out until 1975, when she finally received an  ...