SHORT TAKES : Opera Star Beverly Sills Decries Explicit Sex, Violence in the Arts

Opera star Beverly Sills at a Catholic fund-raiser denounced violence and explicit sex in the arts. But she added that “you can’t criminalize imagination.”

“We have laws today that tell us we can’t smoke on airplanes, but you can freely sing--if you’ll pardon the expression--about the joys of violating a woman’s body in monstrous detail on commercial recordings because it’s a constitutional right,” said Sills, 61, who directed the New York City Opera from 1979 to 1989 after retiring from the stage.

She addressed about 1,000 politicians and pundits Thursday night at the 45th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner. The $500-a-plate dinner, run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, benefits health care causes.

“We do not need self-appointed vigilantes to insist upon legislating artistic work because you can’t legislate taste,” Sills said. “You can’t criminalize imagination. You shouldn’t throw artists in jail.”

Instead, she said, higher moral standards are needed.

“We don’t need more laws to be enacted,” she said. “We need to be outraged and worried about our kids. We will not accept the lowest common form of human behavior as the price for free expression.”