The soprano Beverly Sills had a long and remarkable career, first as a singer and then as an opera-company manager. Thanks to her striking voice, her stage acting and her off-stage personality she became the most popular opera singer of her era with American audiences.

Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, she acquired the nickname “Bubbles” (from having been born blowing bubbles). She revealed years later that the name “Beverly Sills” came from a friend of her mother who “thought that some day it might look better on a marquee than Belle Silverman”. At 7 she began singing lessons with Estelle Liebling, with whom she would study for more than 30 years.

As a child she appeared on the popular Major Bowesradio programme and earned money singing in commercials. She had already toured America in Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as The Merry Widow and Countess Maritza, by the time she debuted in professional opera, singing Frasquita in Carmen for a Philadelphia production in 1947.

Her life in opera truly began with a 1951 tour during which she sang 40 performances of La Traviata. The legendary Rosa Ponselle coached her Manon and supervised her 1953 debut in the role in Baltimore. That same year at San Francisco Opera she sang Elena in Mefistofele, in Mozart’s Don Giovanniand Gerhilde in Die Walküre.

Considering Sills’s essentially lightweight voice, her versatility was spectacular. The first half of her career included not only many lyric-coloratura parts, but also Aida, Mimì, Tosca, Fiora in L’amore dei Tre Re, and Carmen.

After eight auditions, the statuesque redhead finally debuted at New York City Opera in 1955 as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus. She regarded Philine in Mignon (1957) as her first significant success with the company. The following year, in the title role of The Ballad of Baby Doe, Sills enchanted critics, the public and the opera’s composer, Douglas Moore. She also made her mark at NYCO as Konstanze, Donna Anna, Violetta and Marguerite.

But it was her brilliantly polished florid singing and scintillating personality as Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesareat NYCO (1966) that propelled Sills to international notice. She remained loyal to the company, where she could shape the repertoire. Of the numerous productions staged especially for her, most memorable were Manon and Donizetti’s “Tudor trilogy”, Roberto Devereux, Maria Stuarda and Anna Bolena.

At NYCO and elsewhere her stage partnership with the bass Norman Treigle created memorable performances of Giulio Cesare, Faust, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and The Golden Cockerel. Sills performed with almost every important American company, forming especially close ties with the Opera Company of Boston and its director, Sarah Caldwell.

Her international career began as late as 1967, as Mozart’s Queen of the Night in Vienna. Two years later she captivated La Scala as Pamira in Rossini’s L’assedio di Corinto. She returned there for Lucia di Lammermoor, which introduced her to Covent Garden in 1970. Sills was also heard in Berlin, Venice, Naples and Buenos Aires. She continued to return to NYCO, performing in both tragedy and comedy. Most notable in the latter category was Marie in La fille du Régiment, a terrific Sills vehicle in a production that toured to more than 15 cities.

Sills performed as a guest artist with the Metropolitan Opera as Donna Anna at the Lewisohn Stadium, New York, in 1966. Her house debut did not take place until after the general manager Rudolf Bing departed (the coolness between the two was notorious). She appeared at the Met in L’asse-dio di Corinto (debut, 1975), La traviata, Lucia, Thaïs, and as Norina in a new production of Don Pasquale that marked her final company appearance in 1979.

Through sheer intelligence, musical and theatrical, Sills navigated surely through roles meant for a more dramatic voice, such as Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux. Certainly she better suited Lucia, Norina, Marie, and Elvira ( I Puritani). Hers was a shimmering high soprano, finely trained and expertly produced. (She stunned Boston and New York in 1969 singing Strauss’s stratospheric Zerbinetta in the fearsomely difficult original version.) Heard today on records, Sills proves most satisfying as Cleopatra, Manon, Baby Doe and in songs from Victor Herbert’s operettas. She recorded much else, but ultimately one had to see as well as hear her. Fortunately, several portrayals (among them Elisabetta, Manon, Violetta, and Marie) were released on video.

In 1979 came Sills’s last complete opera on NYCO’s stage (Menotti’s La loca, which she had premiered earlier that year in San Diego). The following year marked her official farewell to singing, a gala performance at NYCO, telecast nationwide. That year she became the company’s general director. She held the post for a decade, introducing surtitles, invigorating the repertoire and becoming a persuasive fundraiser. She served as chairman of the Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts, 1994-2002, and as chairman of the Met, 2002-05; she had joined its board of directors in 1991.

The Met paid tribute to Sills in 2005 when an endowment gift enabled the company to establish the $50,000 Beverly Sills Artist Award, to be given annually to an outstanding Met singer for career development purposes. The initial winners were the baritone Nathan Gunn (2006) and the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato (2007).

Sills was married for nearly half a century to Peter Greenough, who died in 2006. The handicaps of their two children (a deaf daughter and a mentally retarded son) created a profound need in Sills to contribute her talents to charitable organisations. Her activities included serving the March of Dimes for many years as national chairman of its Mothers’ March on Birth Defects. She was also closely associated with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Her stage achievements, passionate arts advocacy and overwhelming public-spiritedness all helped to make Sills one of her country’s most admired women. Her innumerable honours included the US Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Carter in 1980.

Sills documented her story in two autobiographies, Bubbles (1976) and Beverly (1987). She is survived by her children and three stepchildren.

Beverly Sills, operatic soprano, was born on May 25, 1929. She died of cancer on July 2, 2007, aged 78