Joan Sutherland

Dame Joan Alston Sutherland (7 November 1926 – 10 October 2010) was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano. From the late 1950s through the 1980s, she helped revive the bel canto repertoire.

Her voice was notable for its agility, precise intonation, sharp staccatos, a trill, and a strong upper register, though critics often noted her unclear diction. In 1962, she became the first Australian to win a Grammy Award, taking home Best Classical Performance – Vocal Soloist for the 1961 season. Known as La Stupenda, she is considered one of the greatest sopranos in history.

Early and personal life

Born in Sydney to Scottish parents, Sutherland attended St Catherine's School in Waverley, New South Wales. As a child, she copied her mother’s singing exercises. Her mother, a mezzo-soprano, had studied voice but never pursued a career.

Sutherland began serious vocal study at 18 with John and Aida Dickens. She made her concert debut in Sydney in 1947, singing Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. In 1949, she won the Sydney Sun Aria competition and placed third in radio 3DB’s Mobil Quest; she won the Mobil Quest the following year.

Her stage debut came in 1951 in Eugene Goossens’s Judith. She then moved to London to study at the Royal College of Music with Clive Carey. Engaged as a utility soprano at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, she debuted there on 28 October 1952 as the First Lady in The Magic Flute, followed by a few performances as Clotilde in Bellini’s Norma alongside Maria Callas. An early admirer of Kirsten Flagstad, she trained as a Wagnerian dramatic soprano.

In December 1952, she sang her first leading role at the Royal Opera House, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera. Other early roles included Agathe in Der Freischütz, the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, Desdemona in Otello, Gilda in Rigoletto, Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Pamina in The Magic Flute. In 1953, she sang Lady Rich in Britten’s Gloriana, and on 27 January 1955, she created the role of Jenifer in Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage.

Sutherland married Australian conductor and pianist Richard Bonynge on 16 October 1954. Their son Adam was born in 1956. Bonynge gradually convinced her that Wagner might not suit her voice, and that her ease with high notes and coloratura pointed toward the bel canto repertoire. She eventually settled into that Fach, spending most of her career as a dramatic coloratura soprano.

Career

In 1957, she performed in Handel’s Alcina with the Handel Opera Society and sang selections from Donizetti’s Emilia di Liverpool on radio. The next year, she sang Donna Anna in Don Giovanni in Vancouver. In 1959, she was invited to sing Lucia di Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House in a production conducted by Tullio Serafin and staged by Franco Zeffirelli, with fellow Australian Kenneth Neate replacing the scheduled tenor on short notice. In 1960, she recorded The Art of the Prima Donna, a double LP that won the Grammy for Best Classical Performance – Vocal Soloist in 1962; it was added to the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia registry in 2011.

She sang Lucia to great acclaim in Paris in 1960, and in 1961 at La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera. For her Met debut as Lucia, standees began lining up at 7:30 that morning, and her Mad Scene drew a 12-minute ovation. In 1960, she sang Alcina at La Fenice and later that year at the Dallas Opera, making her US debut. Newspapers worldwide soon called her La Stupenda.

Her Metropolitan Opera debut was on 26 November 1961, singing Lucia. Over 223 performances there, her last appearance was a concert on 12 March 1989. Between 1978 and 1982, her relationship with the Met soured after she declined the role of Constanze in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail more than a year before rehearsals. The management then refused to stage The Merry Widow for her as requested, and she did not perform at the Met during that period, even though a production of Rossini’s Semiramide had been planned; she later returned for other operas.

During the 1960s, she added many bel canto heroines to her repertoire: Violetta in La traviata, Amina in La sonnambula, and Elvira in I puritani in 1960; the title role in Beatrice di Tenda in 1961; Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots and the title role in Semiramide in 1962; Norma in Norma and Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare in 1963; and Marie in La fille du régiment in 1966. In 1965, she toured Australia with the Sutherland-Williamson Opera Company, accompanied by a young tenor named Luciano Pavarotti. In the 1970s, she worked to improve her diction and expressiveness, adding roles like Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda and Lucrezia Borgia, as well as Massenet’s Esclarmonde. With Pavarotti, she made a studio recording of Turandot in 1972 conducted by Zubin Mehta.