RIP Joan Sutherland

[South Fl Marc]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 11:31am

Ms. Sutherland was truly the greatest opera singer of her age.
Her vocal agility and vituosity were unmatched.
I was not only blessed to have seen her many, many times , I was lucky to have worked with her also.
RIP La Stupenda.
RIP La Stupenda

[Q]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 11:34am

What a gift, to us all.

RIP

[NYadgal]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 11:38am

Oh, dear... Such sad news.

She was truly a gift to us all.

RIP and thank you for all you shared with the world!

[TimesSquareRegular]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 11:42am

The first opera I saw at the Met when I moved to NYC was her performance in LA SOMNAMBULA ...... gratefully, her superb talent has been captured on hundred of recordings.

[AnthVoice2010]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 12:29pm

My first opera was with Miss. Sutherland as well

her final round of "Puritani"....the woman was 60 and when she was feeling well - the voice was simply sensational.

I have never heard any other voice have the same visceral impact at high C and above.

It felt like it was spinning in the middle of the opera house and you could touch it.

A great great talent. untouchable by anyone today!

Updated On: 10/11/10 at 12:29 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 12:42pm

And then there was the time Dame Joan appeared on The Dinah Shore Show with Ella Fitzgerald. Dinah thought it'd be a good idea for the three of them to sing "Lover, Come Back to Me" together...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPmRsdP6rl4

Dame Joan wasn't used to singing with gals who needed microphones.

[Q]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 12:45pm

That clip is GREAT! I love how Dinah just keeps gesturing for the mic to come closer. And they're all still having a great time.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 12:51pm

Here's their "Three Little Maids"--audio only, but it's still fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhJeeQ38v7k

[South Fl Marc]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 1:05pm

One of the most memorable opera performances I saw her in was I Puratani at the Met in the 70s. I was in my early teens. It was a Saturday matinee that was broadcast over the radio.

Her costars were Lucianno Pavarotti, Sherell Milnes and James Morris. The performance was electrifying, with each of the four leads in glorious voice.

The crowd was cheering so loud at the end that it wasn’t until later when I heard a tape that a friend made from the radio that I realized Joan had completely missed the last note.
When I asked her about it later she said she couldn’t hear the orchestra over the Bravas.

The cast took their solo curtain calls, after a while they came back for another round and then a third and then a fourth. It kept on and on. Finally after 45 minutes the Met, who had to set up for an evening performance, lowered the asbestos curtain thinking that would get people to leave. Eventually they had to raise the asbestos curtain for more curtain calls.

[Q]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 1:09pm

Marc - that gave me goosebumps! How wonderful to have experienced it.

[wonkit]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 3:02pm

This saddens me a great deal. I was fortunate enough to see Ms. Sutherland several times and she never, never disappointed. Her singing was always sweet, and true, and effortless. The sound was ravishing and secure. May the joy she gave to all her listeners ensure her eternal peace.

[Mrs Mangel]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 3:44pm

We will never see her like again. Got to see her last "Hugenots" in Sydney, plus encounter her several times behind the scenes-truly a class act. This clip kind of sums her up for me...
"Hoffman" rehearsal.

[AnthVoice2010]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 4:06pm

operachic.com:


The purity and balance of the emission, the flexibility of the instrument, the beauty of the timbre and the breath control that made the wildest fiorettature sound so apparently effortless -- Sutherland had everything to become the greatest coloratura singer of the 20th Century. She even turned her limitations -- the downright bad diction that not even her most ardent fans can seriously defend -- into her trademark.

Her talent was so astonishing that she made you forget everything else -- she's the anti-realist soprano, there's no opera as musical theater in her universe (no wonder she thought modern stagings were ridiculously beside the point). Sutherland is there, tall and gawky and who cares if she's double the size of the tenor unless the tenor is Pavarotti, she's soaring above that, bending sound to her will, creating extraordinary music that, if you listen close enough, will reveal you secrets -- it's the stuff the Sirens were supposed to do, "tell you everything that is going to happen over the whole world", according to Homer (via Butler).

Not to mention, the favorite pastime of some opera lovers, taxidermy, is ill-fitted to explain her work and her life. Thanks to an extraordinary husband -- a much better musicologist and vocal coach than a conductor, but, another of her wonders, she makes his limitations in the pit beside the point -- Sutherland made opera travel in time, bringing the past back to glorious life. She and Bonynge revived a repertory that was considered inferior simply for the lack of the right voice to bring it back to us -- they went back in time and gave a most conservative opera world an actual revolution. Her range and versatility always beat the odds, laughed at the nay-sayers (just consider her mid-career Turandot), taught us that it's pointless to look back at Malibran and Pasta and all the other great dead singers who might or might not have sounded the way we've been taught they did.

Sutherland makes nostalgia look silly -- there's no repertory that's too hard to bring back to life, if you have the talent. She makes us hope that someone else -- with the right voice and, maybe, the right mentor -- will come after her, to surprise us, to show us once again how it's done, here and now. Her work -- and Bonynge's -- remains so fresh because it's so open to new possibilities.

But then, Joan Sutherland made everything look effortless -- the very definition of genius.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 5:15pm

I was fortunate enough to hear her sing at the Met several times. She had an exceptional voice. May she rest in peace.

[sabrelady]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 9:24pm

While her Lucia d'Lammermoor was probably her most famous and (justly) honoured role, I always loved her La fille du regiment best. She was just so joyous in her "boyishness", she seemed to enjoy herself almost as much as the audience.
She left such wonderful memories. I've just put on my vinyl "The Art of the Prima Donna" and will bask in her glorious voice.
RIP.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 10/11/10 at 9:38pm

What a voice.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 10/12/10 at 10:11am

Just how beloved is Dame Joan in her native Australia?

There is but one portrait that hangs in the complex that is the Sydney Opera House. It is of her.

I could find no other.

[Q]

Posted: 10/13/10 at 12:15pm

Video link.

[AnthVoice2010]

Posted: 10/13/10 at 12:56pm

The thing you really can't get from her video's or even cd's and only slightly from live tapes, is the sheer impact of it all...

Leave aside the greatest technique any singer ever had, you still had a timbre like vanilla with hints of butter-cream and the vocal heft of a wagnerian soprano ...it was just...well almost too much to absorb....

There is simply no one - - singing like this today....or even near it and one wonders why?

[Mrs Mangel]

Posted: 10/14/10 at 6:07pm

Because today Opera Managements would be judging her solely on her looks, and wouldn't give two hoots that it was the most sensational colaratura technique ever.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/14/10 at 10:17pm

That's not true.