[Oct. 11, 2010] - The singer known all over the world as "La Stupenda," Joan Sutherland, has died at age 83. Called who was called "the voice of the century" by her frequent on-stage and recording partner, Luciano Pavarotti, she had a clear, big, and bright voice that seemingly effortlessly traversed a huge range.
A famously down-to-earth, good-humored, gracious, and self-effacing Australian, she was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1978, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2004, but she also made delightful appearances on such pop culture programs as The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, where in 1963 she sang alongside Shore and Ella Fitzgerald.
with a sturdy and tall build, the soprano was born in 1926 in Sydney. Her father, a tailor born in Scotland, passed away at age six; her mother Muriel, a mezzo herself who had studied with the same teacher as Nellie Melba, was her first teacher. Mother and daughter, along with one of Sutherland's half-siblings from her father's first marriage, moved in with an aunt and uncle.
By age sixteen, Sutherland began working as a secretary to support herself, only taking voice lessons when she could afford them. Her teacher convinced her to enter a local vocal competition, where she took first place. The prize money was enough to cover her travel expenses to England in 1951; accompanied by her mother, she went to London to enroll at the Royal College of Music.
A friend from Australia who had also landed in London, a fellow music student named Richard Bonynge, urged her to try singing outside the standard repertoire and investigate the bel canto roles that he was convinced suited her voice, full as they were of florid passages and sky-high notes. He was right; Sutherland's singing-bird tone was a glove-perfect match for the music written by composers like Donizetti and Bellini.
Bonynge became not just her coach and bel canto mentor, but also her husband in 1954; her later contracts for both live and recorded performances often stipulated that Bonynge would be the conductor, though his formal training was restricted to the piano and vocal coaching. But the partnership was so perfect--and his initial instincts and, later, his deep understanding of his wife's voice were so spot-on--that the terms were acceptable.
In 1952, on her fourth try, she was accepted into Royal Opera House's company; later that season, she sang the small role of Clotilde opposite Maria Callas in Bellini's Norma. By 1959, she was granted the opportunity to sing Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, a notoriously tough role in an opera that hadn't been staged at Covent Garden in over three decades--and the audience adored her.
Her American debut was in 1960, where she sang Handel's Alcina at the Dallas Opera in its first American production. The following year, she gave her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Lucia. In the middle of one of the opera's signature arias, in which the soprano must climb to a deadly-high E-flat, the audience interrupted her with an ovation for that went on for nearly five minutes; at the end of the scene, the audience erupted into cheering that famously went on for twelve minutes.
Alongside her utter command of the bel canto repertoire, she sang composers like Mozart, Verdi, Handel, and Gounod as well as Wagner; she also created the role of Jennifer in Michael Tippett's Midsummer Marriage.
She passed away at her home in Switzerland; her death was confirmed by another longtime friend and colleague, the mezzo Marilyn Horne, who made her New York debut at the same concert as Sutherland. She is survived by her son and two grandchildren as well as her husband.
Browse more editorial features here
by Anastasia Tsioulcas
Featured Albums
