[BITList] Divine it was

[John Feltham]

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Sutherland, Dame  Joan Alston  (1926-2010), singer, was born on 7 November 1926 in Sydney, Australia, the daughter of (William) McDonald Sutherland and his wife, Muriel Beatrice Alston.

Early life in Sydney

Sutherland's father was a master tailor who had travelled to Australia as a Scottish immigrant. As a businessman, he was far from successful, and when he died on Joan's sixth birthday he left his family penniless. Joan's mother, Muriel, was a good, amateur mezzo-soprano who had studied with Dame Nellie Melba's teacher, Mathilde Marchesi. Faced with the tragedy of her husband's early death and the spectre of penury, she abandoned the family home and moved in with relatives in Queen Street, Woollahra. Life was far from easy for the Sutherland family but Muriel was determined that her children would be well educated. In an attempt to secure her daughter's future she sent her to St Catherine's Church of England Grammar School for Girls, Waverley.

At school Sutherland was a keen basketball player and an average scholar, but never a member of the school choir. Having had early singing lessons with her mother, she had a well-developed voice for her age and tended to overpower the other members of the group. She studied singing for a time at the New South Wales State Conservatorium but music lessons were expensive, so she attended a secretarial course and later accepted a variety of tedious office jobs to fund her education. At the age of eighteen she won a scholarship to study with John and Aida Dickens, and in 1946 she sang in a performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio. The orchestra was the Sydney Symphony and the principal oboe was the young Charles Mackerras. Sutherland also sang at local clubs for low fees, and for one of these performances she was accompanied by her future husband, Richard Alan Bonynge (b. 1930), as pianist. In 1947 she sang in Handel's Acis and Galatea and in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas; in 1949 she was awarded fourth place in the Mobil Quest; in 1950 she won the Sun Aria Competition; and in 1951 she was the eponymous heroine for the Australian premiere of Eugene Goossens's Judith, conducted by the composer. Keen to try her luck in Europe, Sutherland used the money from these competitions and performances to travel to Britain.

Covent Garden and bel canto

After sailing by way of the Suez Canal, Sutherland reached Tilbury towards the end of August 1951. From September that year, she studied with Clive Carey at the Royal College of Music and, after four auditions, she was engaged in 1952 by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on a weekly salary of £10. She made her debut there in October 1952, singing the First Lady in Mozart's Die Zauberflote under John Pritchard, with whom she later worked and recorded extensively. Her debut was the first of ninety-four performances that she gave at the theatre which included operas by Mozart, Verdi, Bellini, Strauss, Wagner, Bizet, Britten, Weber, Tippett, Donizetti, Saint-Saens, Handel, Offenbach, Poulenc, and Massenet. During her first six seasons at the London house she mainly performed a string of minor roles under conductors who included Sir John Barbirolli, Vittorio Gui, Erich Kleiber, Fritz Stiedry, and Rudolf Kempe. Convinced that she was destined to become a Wagner singer, she was delighted to be cast as Woglinde in Das Rheingold and Gotterdammerung, Helmwige in Die Walkure, and the Woodbird in Siegfried between 1953 and 1958.

Sutherland's career trajectory changed sharply in 1959 when she sang the leading role in Franco Zeffirelli's critically acclaimed production of Lucia di Lammermoor. Her portrayal of the Scottish heroine was a sensation and the critics were ecstatic. They had found a coloratura to rival the great divas of the past, and a singer who embodied all the musical and technical virtues of earlier prima donnas such as Luisa Tetrazzini. Desmond Shawe-Taylor, writing in the Sunday Times, caught the mood of the time:

In previous performances Miss Sutherland had often given grounds for high hope, but had never quite shaken off a certain angularity of vocal and dramatic deportment. Now all is changed. The voice, always pure, has gained richness and colour, and a brilliant fullness in the upper register: the vocalisation is brilliant, but never merely decorative ... the singer's appearance is appropriate and touchingly beautiful, while her acting underlines at every point the pathos of this ill-used, but by no means insipid, heroine of the North ... Her performance was all of a piece, musically exquisite, dramatically veracious and intense. (Sutherland, 74)
Conducted by Tullio Serafin, but coached by Richard Bonynge, Sutherland had clearly reached an artistic crossroads with Lucia.

Having married Sutherland on 16 October 1954 at the Methodist Church, Lancaster Road, Notting Hill, Bonynge was not only her husband but also her mentor, Svengali, and main artistic partner. He quickly abandoned his intention of becoming a concert pianist and set about shaping her future. He was convinced that she was unsuited to the music of Wagner and that her future lay in bel canto. Bel canto operas had fallen from the repertoire by the middle of the twentieth century and singers such as Maria Callas were only partially successful in reviving them. It was largely thanks to the efforts of Bonynge and Sutherland that these once-forgotten masterpieces came once more to be performed regularly at most major opera houses. But her staggering success with Donizetti's opera did little to encourage Sutherland to abandon her ambitions as a Wagner singer and she later recalled that she and Bonynge 'fought like cats and dogs' over her shift to bel canto, and that 'it took Richard three years to convince me'  (New York Times, 12 Oct 2010). Having adopted this new direction the couple quickly became a formidable partnership. Sutherland was well aware of how much she owed Bonynge and never denied that debt. In later years, she remarked that 'people talk a lot of nonsense about becoming a star. One is just given a talent, and it's one's duty to make the most of it. My talent was my voice, and Richard was born with a talent to delve and discover things. He discovered my voice. I have been extraordinarily fortunate that our two talents came together and gave me so much happiness'  (The Guardian, 12 Oct 2010).

La Stupenda

While under contract to Covent Garden, Sutherland made her debut at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. There she sang the Countess in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and the First Lady in Die Zauberflote in 1956 (the year her son, Adam, was born), Madame Herz in Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor in 1957, and Donna Anna in his Don Giovanni and Elvira in Bellini's I Puritani in 1960. She had made her recording debut in 1959 when she sang Donna Anna under Carlo Maria Guilini for EMI and was offered an exclusive contract with Decca in 1960. That year she recorded The Art of the Prima Donna for the label with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Italian conductor Francesco Molinari-Pradelli. The disc quickly acquired cult status, and did much to establish her fame as an international operatic superstar. She also sang at Paris, Venice (where she was dubbed 'La Stupenda' after a performance of Handel's Alcina, a description that was quickly taken up around the world), and Dallas in 1960, and made her New York debut singing in Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda for the American Opera Society in 1961. New York quickly became central to her activities and it was not long before the Metropolitan Opera came calling. After her spectacular performance of Lucia there in November 1961, which had fans queuing from 7.30 am and which prompted a twelve-minute ovation after the mad scene, she gave a further 222 performances of twelve operas at the house. In 1965 Sutherland and Bonynge were joined by the young Luciano Pavarotti for a tour of Australia promoted by J. C. Williamson Ltd. Billed as 'The Sutherland-Williamson International Grand Opera Company', the troupe gave a total of twenty-eight performances in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, and Brisbane.

In 1968 Sutherland and Bonynge moved permanently to Switzerland, where their next-door neighbour was Sir Noel Coward, who soon became a close family friend. In 1972 Sutherland recorded the role of the eponymous heroine in Puccini's Turandot for Decca with Pavarotti, Zubin Mehta, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a part that she had never sung on stage. That year she also appeared in the American two-part television programme, Who's Afraid of Opera?. Having previously been accused of being stiff and aloof on stage by the New York critics, she answered her detractors by giving a sparkling portrayal of Marie in Donizetti's La fille du regiment at the Metropolitan Opera in the weeks leading up to the broadcasts and by charming viewers with her easy on-screen manner. Time magazine was quick to report the change and noted that:

even to operagoers who cheer her vocal brilliance, soprano Joan Sutherland has often seemed to have the personality of an Amazonian Barbie doll: imposing, but stiff and cool. Recently she dispelled much of that reputation with her hearty clowning in ... The Daughter of the Regiment ... Last week, with her appearance in the first of two 30-minute TV shows called Who's Afraid of Opera? (PBS), her humanization seemed complete. Singing, lecturing, bantering with a trio of puppets, she was revealed as a thoroughly warm and winning woman. (Time, 24 April 1972)
When Bonynge was appointed music director of the Australian Opera in 1976 Sutherland joined him for performances at the Sydney Opera House. Although her repertoire had already been established her reserves as a performer seemed inexhaustible. With the company she gave in excess of 260 performances of twenty-three roles. She was always supportive of younger members of the troupe, prompting Lyndon Terracini, later artistic director of the company, to say: 'she was always an interested, open and generous colleague. She was not at all protective of her turf'  (Sydney Morning Herald, 12 Oct 2010). In 1985 she revisited the role of Lucia at Covent Garden, but the critics felt that Zeffirelli's mid-century production had lost much of its early lustre. After a series of farewell performances at the Sydney Opera House, where she sang the role of Queen Marguerite de Valois in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots in October 1990, she made a guest appearance in Johann Strauss the younger's Die Fledermaus at Covent Garden in December 1990.

After retiring from the stage Sutherland gave masterclasses and acted as an adjudicator. She was particular closely associated with the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, where she was a judge from 1993 and its patron from 2003. In 1995 she starred as Mother Rudd in the Australian comedy film Dad and Dave: On Our Selection, based on a popular stage play of the same name, and in 1997 she published her autobiography, subtitled A Prima Donna's Progress.

Impact and legacies

Joan Sutherland was a musical phenomenon. Her commanding stage presence, her remarkable vocal technique, and her astonishing capacity for hard work endeared her to audiences and managements around the world. Never a natural actress, she stood five feet nine inches tall, was solidly built, and had a prominent jaw. She could often be a challenge for even the most expert costumier, and she once remarked in her characteristic, self-deprecating manner that, in the hands of a less-than-expert designer, she could look like 'a large column walking about the stage'  (personal knowledge). Dame Edith Evans quipped: 'one of God's pranks was to make Joan an overgrown schoolgirl and then give her a divine voice'  (The Guardian, 12 Oct 2010). A divine voice it was. Even though she was accused from time to time of poor diction, her exceptional coloratura, her sensitive use of vocal colour, her ability to nuance difficult legato passages with ease, and her capacity to trill effortlessly ensured that she became the benchmark against which later generations of coloraturas were judged.

Sutherland was showered with honours throughout her career. She was made a CBE and named Australian of the year in 1961; she was among the first to be appointed companion of the Order of Australia in 1975, and she was made a DBE in 1979. In 1991 she was appointed to the Order of Merit, and in 2002 she was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Her recorded legacy included multiple recordings of operas, oratorios, and symphonies by Beethoven, Bellini, Bizet, Delibes, Donizetti, Handel, Mozart, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, Verdi, and Wagner, among others. Her partners on these discs were always conductors of the front rank and included Sir John Pritchard, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Georg Solti, Carlo Maria Guilini, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, and Zubin Mehta. It was her recordings with her husband, Richard Bonynge, however, that showcased her peerless approach to singing best and many of them quickly achieved the status of classics of the gramophone.

The last years of Sutherland's life were marred by accidents and medical problems. She suffered dreadfully from arthritis, and in July 2008 she broke both her legs while gardening at her home in Les Avants, near Montreux, Switzerland. Although she recovered sufficiently to attend a lunch hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Place for holders of the Order of Merit in 2009, she died from cardiopulmonary failure at her home in Switzerland on 10 October 2010; she was survived by her husband and son.

Raymond Holden 

Sources  B. Mackenzie and T. Mackenzie, Singers of Australia: from Melba to Sutherland (1967) + N. Major, Joan Sutherland: the authorized biography (1987) + J. Sutherland, A prima donna's progress: the autobiography of Joan Sutherland (1997) + J. Priest, Flight of divas (2004) + The Times (12 Oct 2010); (15 Oct 2010); (18 Oct 2010); (26 Oct 2010) + Daily Telegraph (12 Oct 2010) + The Guardian (12 Oct 2010) + The Independent (12 Oct 2010) + New York Times (11 Oct 2010); (12 Oct 2010) + The Australian (12 Oct 2010); (1 Feb 2011) + The Advertiser [Australia] (12 Oct 2010) + Sydney Morning Herald (12 Oct 2010) + N. Bryant, 'La Stupenda', BBC News website, www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/nickbryant/2010/10/la_stupenda.html,  accessed on 16 July 2013 + www.metoperafamily.org/en/archives/met-history/,  accessed on 16 July 2013, Metropolitan Opera, New York, archive + opera programmes, www.nla.gov.au/selected-library-collections/williamson-collection,  accessed on 16 July 2013, NL Aus., Williamson Collection + www.rohcollections.org.uk,  accessed on 16 July 2013, Royal Opera House, London, archive + Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, www.jspac.com.au,  accessed on 16 July 2013 + Burke, Peerage + WW (2010) + personal knowledge (2014) + private information (2014) + m. cert.
Archives  FILM BFI NFTVA, documentary footage + BFI NFTVA, light entertainment footage + BFI NFTVA, performance footage SOUND BL NSA, interview recordings + BL NSA, performance recordings
Likenesses  photographs, 1926-2006, Getty Images, London · photographs, 1953-2009, PA Images, London · photographs, c.1954-2004, Corbis · photographs, 1957-2004, Rex Features, London · L. Morley, resin prints, 1960-69, NPG · photographs, 1961, Camera Press, London · photograph, 1962, PA Images, London [see illus.] · A. Sidey, double portrait, photograph, 1964 (with George Henry Hubert Lascelles), Mirrorpix · photographs, 1965-2004, Photoshot, London · R. Bruce, gouache on paper, c.1968, Bridgeman Art Library, London · J. S. Lewinski, bromide print, 1968, NPG · double portraits, photographs, 1968 (with Martina Arroya), Mirrorpix · photograph, 1968, Mary Evans Picture Library · C. Beaton, pencils, 1970-1979?, NPG · B. Fantoni, gouache on board, 1970-79, Bridgeman Art Library, London · photograph, 1973, Mary Evans Picture Library · photographs, 1973, Camera Press, London · photograph, 1975, Mirrorpix · R. Hannaford, oils, c.1977, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia · J. Cassab, lithograph, 1984, NPG · T. Douglas, photographs, 1990, Camera Press, London · L. Morley, gelatin silver photograph, 1992, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia · U. Sartini, oils, 1993, NPG · G. Smith, photographs, 2006, Camera Press, London · colour lithograph, Bridgeman Art Library, London · obituary photographs · photographs, repro. in Sutherland, Autobiography (1997) · photographs, repro. in Major, Sutherland (1987) · photographs, Lebrecht Music and Arts Library




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