Sills's role in precipitating Lincoln Center's recent high-level departures is therefore the subject of intense speculation. "These guys keep falling like dominoes, and she's still there," notes Bernheimer, who won a Pulitzer Prize as the classical-music critic of the Los Angeles Times. This pattern is long-standing; Sills's conflicts with Gordon Davis's predecessor, Nat Leventhal, were so notorious that the New York Times actually covered their efforts to make peace.

Sills attributes Davis's resignation (in exchange for a $1 million buyout) to his disappointing discovery that the $525,000-a-year job of president wasn't what he expected. "To an outsider, the president's job appears to be far more glamorous than it actually is," she says airily. "A lot of people felt this was much more of an entrepreneurial job, like Sol Hurok, where you go off to Moscow and audition ballerinas. But this job also involves sewerage, electricity, infrastructure, security, garage maintenance, leaks, revenues, costs, cleaning, restaurant contracts -- it's so full of nitty-gritty that you have to leave the auditioning of ballerinas to other people."

"Once we have a new president, then I'll make my move," says Sills.

Those in the know scoff at the patronizing suggestion that Davis -- who had served as a Lincoln Center board member for more than two decades, not to mention as founding chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center -- didn't know what he was getting into when he signed on as president. "It's simply not true," says one of his confidants. A tall, elegant lawyer who is one of the city's most prominent black men, Davis is nobody's fool, and when informed about Sills's comments, he shakes his head in disbelief. But on the record, he says only this: "I met almost every usher and every security guard, crawled through every nook and cranny of the halls, and spent hours observing the operation of the garages."

The real problem, according to many insiders, is that the president of Lincoln Center will never have genuine authority as long as Sills -- a far more hands-on chairman than her predecessors -- sticks around. "A great diva does not like to have a tenor standing in front of her," says one. "Beverly is used to being in charge. She's the real president, and the person who's called president is effectively the vice-president and has to take orders."

Sills also tries to gloss over the resignation of Marshall Rose, claiming he never agreed to stay beyond the time when the redevelopment master plan was presented to the city. Her explanations have failed to persuade knowledgeable observers. "Here he gave a year of his life, pro bono, to Lincoln Center, completely idealistically, and he came up with compromise solutions time and time again -- only to be greeted with scornful opposition," says one participant. "He realized he was going to be hampered at every turn."

After one particularly rancorous meeting in October, the New York Times reported that Rose complained to Sills, "You stabbed me in the back." Both Rose and Sills later denied that he said it, although other participants confirmed that he had. "We're very good friends," Rose tells me, poker-faced. "The day the story appeared, my wife" -- Candice Bergen -- "and Beverly and I went to see Dance of Death together." And the real reason he left the redevelopment project? "I was never asked to sing in the opera," he says with a grin. "I was never asked to dance. That's why I left."

Rose has been replaced on an interim basis by Martin Oppenheimer, the chairman of City Center. For how long? "I don't have a specific time frame," Oppenheimer says. "But I don't have the skill or the will to do this for the next ten years, so ultimately we will have a successor."

Then why not now? The appointment of a temporary head for a such a lengthy project only raised more eyebrows, creating the unseemly impression that Lincoln Center couldn't find a suitable long-term successor.

As for a new president, the current party line is that Lincoln Center will have one by February. Sills claims she will depart soon thereafter. "Once we have a new president, then I'll make my move," she says. "I'll certainly stay for a transition, but I think it's a mistake ever to stay too long at the fair. And I have something else I want to do, a new project I can't talk about now."

But colleagues wonder whether Sills will really be able to relinquish the spotlight; as one notes, her service has been motivated by "huge ego needs" as well as altruism. "She's not leaving so fast," says Linda LeRoy Janklow. "Don't believe her when she tells you that." Another associate comments, "It's her way of making people say, 'Please, Beverly, don't leave!' "

Some associates are genuinely loath to see her go. "We're all holding on to her ankles," Janice Price insisted brightly, shortly before handing in her own resignation. Certainly no one disputes Sills's contributions. "She's an absolute genius at fund-raising, and therefore of inestimable value to them," notes Bernheimer.

But among the stewards of Lincoln Center -- a high-level roster of board members that constitutes a virtual Who's Who of New York money and power -- there is a growing consensus that this fractious era should be concluded as quickly as possible. "I think it's time for Beverly to move on, because she's become a lightning rod for a lot of positive and negative feelings," says one official. "Someone with better vision, and larger vision, and a lot of patience is going to have to come in."

Her successor will face formidable challenges. "This process has ripped the fabric that holds Lincoln Center together, the sense of common purpose and pride," says Kellogg. "I think it created so much antagonism that it will be a very long time before we can restore a sense of cooperation. There is a sense that we have to find a way to come together again -- or come apart. We have lost a lot of public confidence, and the image of Lincoln Center has certainly been tarnished."

Loyalists maintain that the redevelopment flap is secondary to the real business of Lincoln Center. "It's not in disarray," Janklow insists. "We are performing every single day. The companies are all working exceedingly well. It only seems in disarray because of the redevelopment project."

As for Sills, she has a lifetime of experience in putting the best face on things and marching onstage to prove that the show will go on. "Five years from now, we'll look back and say, 'It's really a miracle that those organizations were able to pull themselves together and make it happen,' " she claims.

"It will happen," she adds, with such a steely edge to her voice that her prediction sounds very much like a royal command. Cleopatra herself couldn't have said it better.

From the February 4, 2002 issue of New York magazine