Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE 1926

Sutherland made her first recording, a Bach Cantata, for His Master’s Voice in 1958. In 1959 she began recording for Louise Hanson-Dyer’s L’Oiseau Lyre label and for Decca – with whom she remained for the rest of her long career.

At Covent Garden on 17 February 1959 Sutherland sang the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor for the first time, in a now legendary production by Franco Zeffirelli. It immediately established her as the greatest soprano of her generation.

Later highlights of her extraordinary career have included Donna Anna in Don Giovanni at the Vienna State Opera, Lucia di Lammermoor at the Opéra in Paris and the Metropolitan Opera, New York, I Puritani at Glyndebourne, La Sonnambula at the Royal Opera House and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots and Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda at La Scala in Milan, Norma and Adriana Lecouvreur with Canadian Opera, Leonora in Il Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera, and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It was her interpretation of the title role in Alcina at the Teatro la Fenice, Venice, in 1960 that earned her the affectionate sobriquet, ‘La Stupenda’ – ‘the stupendous one’.

In 1965 Sutherland returned to Australia to perform five of her greatest triumphs – Lucia di Lammermoor, Faust, La Traviata, La Sonnambula, Semiramide – with the Sutherland–Williamson International Grand Opera Company, including a young, comparatively unknown tenor called Luciano Pavarotti. Sutherland’s husband, Richard Bonynge, was musical director. The company played in J.C. Williamson’s theatres in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane.

From 1974 Sutherland sang regularly with the Australian Opera. Her many appearances have included the four heroines in The Tales of Hoffmann, Lakmé, Lucrezia Borgia, Suor Angelica, Norma, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Violetta in La Traviata, Electra in Idomeneo, Lucia di Lammermoor, Amalia in I Masnadieri, Desdemona in Otello, Alcina, Leonora in Il Trovatore, Semiramide, Adriana Lecouvreur, Mme Lidoine in Dialogues of the Carmelites, Elvira in I Puritani and Marie in The Daughter of the Regiment.

In 1988 Sutherland first sang the role of Anna Glawari in The Merry Widow for the Australian Opera. That year she also toured the United States with the Sydney Symphony, presenting concerts in Carnegie Hall and the United Nations in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. to mark Australia’s Bicentennial. At the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, she presented a concert with Richard Bonynge as her accompanist.