Throughout her career, she brought numerous roles to the forefront from a varied repertoire including the Bel canto, verismo, French, and baroque. The following are four roles that she made her own and for which she will always be remembered. Perhaps what makes her interpretation so special is her immaculate technique as she spins the coloratura phrases with such ease and provides a blazing cadenza that shows off her incredible top notes her and virtuosic power.
As she would explain herself: "You couldn't possibly be a prima donna in my family, because if you showed even a hint of temperament you'd have been packed off to bed without any supper. The presbyterian atmosphere of Sutherland's home in her native Sydney was the result of her father William McDonald Sutherland's being a Scots immigrant.
Her mother, Muriel, who gave up a professional career to marry, continued to practise her daily singing lessons, so the incomparable Lucia of the future warbled her way through childhood and into her teens in imitation of her mother, who happened to be a mezzo. This was just the first false step in Joan Sutherland's career.
On the death of her father she went to live with her mother's family, where she was initiated into the raucous jollity of music-hall songs by one member and into the world of opera by another, who played the records of Nellie Melba and Luisa Tetrazzini. Sutherland won her first singing competition when she was 19, and had two years' free study with two leading Australian teachers who promptly persuaded her she was a dramatic soprano. It was at this time that she met a promising young pianist called Richard Bonynge, who was to become her husband, teacher and, some would say, her svengali.
After several professional appearances in Australia, still as a mezzo, she decided to come to London in to try her luck, her eyes hopefully fixed on Covent Garden. She went to learn stage movement at the opera school, where she became more self-conscious than ever about her height, her prominent chin and her strong physique. But it was the musical side of her training that mattered most, and here Bonynge reappeared in her life. It was he who recognised from the start that her voice was a dramatic coloratura, and he tricked her into singing notes she believed were far too high for her.
She did not have the gift of perfect pitch. In all of these she showed her potential in a quite different repertory than that for which she later claimed fame. They disclosed her undoubted potential as a lyric-dramatic soprano, and in some ways it is a pity that potential was never fully realised. Then fate took a hand to change the whole course of her career in an irrevocable way.
The management decided to give her a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, to be directed by Franco Zeffirelli and conducted by the veteran Tullio Serafin, who had helped Maria Callas so much in the early years of her career. Catherine's Girls' School in Waverly, Sutherland received her first education in music, primarily piano, from her mother.
Muriel Sutherland had been taught in the bel canto tradition which her daughter would later help revive interest in. However, her mother would not allow her to be trained vocally until after the age of One of the most important lessons Sutherland's mother taught her was the importance of breathing correctly.
Despite a promising future in music, after leaving school at 16, Sutherland took a secretarial course and worked as a secretary at Sydney University as she trained for her singing career. In when Sutherland was 19 years old, she won a two-year scholarship for vocal training with John and Aida Dickens in Sydney in The couple helped Sutherland develop the upper range of her voice, which would prove important in her development as an opera singer.
That same year, she met fellow music student Richard Bonynge, a pianist and her future husband, who would play a significant role in Sutherland's opera career. Sutherland's future was determined by several important singing competition wins. In , she won the Sun Aria competition and the Mobil Quest, among other singing competitions. Her successes allowed her to attend the Royal College of Music in London on scholarship in the early s.
With her mother, Sutherland moved to London and studied with Clive Carey at the prestigious institution. Sutherland also received some training at London's Opera School. She appeared as part of the company of the Royal Opera, which made its home at Covent Garden a number of years, essentially serving as its leading soprano.
Among her early appearances were roles in Aida and Rigoletto. Sutherland first drew significant critical attention when she created the role of Jennifer in Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage in Though Sutherland was not altogether pleased with her performance, by this time, her basic characteristics as a vocalist were there.
Being a member of company allowed Sutherland to learn solid technique, which played into her vocal agility and purity. In , Sutherland and Bonynge were married. He had come to London in to study. The couple had become reacquainted and married when Sutherland's mother made a trip back to Australia.
The couple later had one son, Adam. Bonynge and Sutherland also formed a musical partnership. She died at the age of 83 following a long illness, on October 10, at her home near Geneva, Switzerland. Home Page. Joan Sutherland Soprano.
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