La Stupendissima

Martin Filler

Joan Sutherland in Lucia di Lammermoor during the Metropolitan Opera, 1961

Joan Sutherland, the Australian-born prima donna assoluta, was scarcely the last survivor between the top sopranos of the twentieth century. Yet Sutherland, who died upon Oct 10 during the age of 83 during her home in Switzerland, is now not so highly regarded in the little quarters as her foremost contemporaries, even though in purely technical terms she outstripped almost all of them.

Her voice was as large as Leontyne Prices as well as scarcely as large as Birgit Nilssons; she could spin out vivid pianissimo effects akin to Renata Tebaldis legendary morbidezza; as well as her trill was not usually improved than Beverly Sillss, though the most appropriate in the commercial operation given Luisa Tetrazzini, who retired when Sutherland was the child. And for clockwork consistency, she could sing rings around the incomparable though erratic Maria Callas.

Sutherlands reputation has languished since of her strong enterprise to preserve her outspoken resources during all costs. From the early 1970s onwardher theatre career spanned 4 decades until her early retirement in 1990she gravitated toward roles which flattered her voice though were dramatically unchallenging, not to say inane, together with such late-nineteenth-century French piffle as Delibess Lakm as well as Massenets Esclarmonde.

In which apply oneself Sutherland was the discord of Callas, her pioneering forerunner in the good postwar reconstruction of the early-nineteenth-century Italian Bel Canto tradition. Callas burned herself out vocally inside of the matter of years by throwing all caution to the winds as well as singing with withering intensity as well as complete abandon in rediscovered works by Bellini, Donizetti, as well as Rossini.

Sutherland played the handmaiden Clotilde to Callass tall priestess in B! ellinis Norma during Covent Garden in 1952, when the star offering the little prescient advice she might well have followed herself. Now look after your voice, Callas, who was usually 3 years her senior, told Sutherland, Were going to hear good things of you. A decade later, when Sutherland eventually took upon Normas fearsomely formidable pretension role, she achieved the Platonic outspoken ideal in which partial equaled by no soprano prior to or since. The demonic Callas as well as the heroic Sills were forever superior actressesSutherland was during her inadvertent most appropriate playing the wind-up doll Olympia in Offenbachs Les contes dHoffmannthough conjunction was endowed with anything similar to her formidable outspoken support.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Joan Sutherland as well as Richard Bonynge in her sauce room after behaving the pretension purpose of Lucia di Lammermoor during the Met, 1961

Once her stardom was established, Sutherland insisted upon being conducted by her father as well as associate Australian, Richard Bonynge. They met in London, where Sutherland changed from Sydney with her mom in 1951 to study during the Royal College of Music. Signed by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden the year later, she combined the sensation in 1958 with an electrifying Let the Bright Seraphim in Handels Samson. The following deteriorate she triumphed in Lucia, as well as her reputation skyrocketed.

A self-taught musical historian, Bonynge was of inestimable assistance in prodding Sutherland into the Bel Canto tools which fit her instrument to perfection. His recessive orchestral style was geared to framing singers, generally his wife, though his interpretations remained wholly devoid of the egghead abyss as well as visceral energy evinced by Georg Solti as well as Herbert von Karajan.

Critics rather unfairly disparaged Bonynge as the li! ghtweigh t, even the hanger-on, as did Rudolf Bing, the Metropolitan Opera general manager who gave Sutherland her 1961 entrance there in Donizettis Lucia di Lammermoor (a scattered success which won her the rave in The New York Times as well as the mark upon The Ed Sullivan Show, the periods twin seals of mainstream informative approval). As the bitchy Bing wrote of the integrate in his antacid though entertaining memoir, 5000 Nights during the Opera (1972), we accept the aged Viennese saying which if we wish the meat, we have to take the bones, as well as at the behind of Bonynges behind referred to him as Mr. Bones.

Even prior to her Met debut, Sutherland constructed the single of the shrewdest self-marketing tools in operatic history: her tour-de-force two-disc gathering The Art of The Prima Donna (1960). Among the first must-have exemplary recordings of the hi-fi LP era, Sutherlands strange diva demo was organised in more-or-less chronological order, from the flinty English Baroque of The Soldier Tird from Artaxerxes by Thomas Arne (composer of Rule, Britannia!) as well as her show-stopping Seraphim; upon by Bel Canto gems by Bellini as well as Rossini (including the ravishingly definitive O redentemi la speme from the formers we Puritani); afterwards culminating with Verdi as well as the French Romantics.

In addition to Sutherlands unusual top noteshigh F was simply inside of her range the stand in manuscript flaunted the prodigious flexibility which betrothed the theatre repertoire of uncommon breadth. In 1965 we saw her entrance Marguerite in Gounods Faust with the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company, as well as her incandescent Jewel Songhappily recorded upon The Art of the Prima Donnawas zero reduced of breathtaking, as well as outsparkled the paste bijoux she dandled.

But Sutherland never lived up to those expectations. Bonynges unending search for lesser-known vehicles which would cosset Sutherlands outspoken chords led to many exercises in pointless antiquarianism! . Her di ction was atrociousperhaps since she specially pulled her lips over her teeth as well as the little found it formidable to discern even what denunciation she was singing in.

With the remarkable lack of self-awareness, La Stupenda (as Sutherlands Italian fans dubbed her; Callas was La Divina) considered her biggest achievement to be the pretension purpose in Esclarmonde, an exceedingly stupid Gothic anticipation which the Met regenerated during her insistence in 1976, after the well-deserved interregnum of sixty-four years. In the climactic scene, the heroine reveals her identity by parting the complicated veil. Sutherland, who was what used to be termed big-boned as well as no beauty, caused titters as her prominent chin jutted onward from her disguise, as well as the overbaked song reached the schmaltzy crescendo.

Joan Sutherland as Marie in La fille du rgiment

Occasionally, though, she would rouse herself as well as spin in an excitingly concerned performance, as she did in the pretension purpose of Puccinis Turandot, the 1972 recording led by Zubin Mehta. She could additionally be the game comedienne, as we fondly recollect from her 1972 Met romp in the pretension purpose of Donizettis La fille du rgiment, conflicting Luciano Pavarotti prior to he deserted himself to depot bleating. Sutherland gaily mugged as well as larked about similar to the little jolly-hockey-sticks during St. Trinians (the fictional English girls propagandize combined by the cartoonist Ronald Searle).

If Sutherlands generally tepid theatre deportment left most to be desired, her still-thrilling recordings do not. Thus it seems expected which her recording legacy will protection the place in the annals of opera as prominent as which of her good Australian predecessor as well as idol, Nellie Melba. La Stupendissima now usually lacks the dessert named after her, too.