Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE 1926

Dame Joan made her farewell to the operatic stage as Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots during the Australian Opera’s 1990 Winter Season. She was then 64. She made one final appearance, however, when she participated in a gala performance of Die Fledermaus at Covent Garden on New Year’s Eve, 1990, with her friends Luciano Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne. Sutherland’s remarkably candid autobiography, A Prima Donna’s Progress, was published in 1997.

Sutherland’s recorded legacy is huge – not just dozens of recitals and definitive recordings of complete operas, but also an album of Christmas songs, an album with her close friend (and neighbour) Noel Coward, and an album of musical comedy favourites that she dedicated to Gladys Moncrieff, a much loved Australian Merry Widow of an earlier generation. Most of her vinyl recordings have been transferred to CD.

Many of Sutherland’s operatic performances are now available on DVD, as is the 1995 film Dad and Dave: On Our Selection, in which she makes a game but unsuccessful attempt to portray ‘Mum’, the wife of Leo McKern’s ‘Dad’. Her 1972 TV series Who’s Afraid of Opera, designed to appeal to youngsters, awaits re-release. And, unbelievably, she can be heard singing Lakmé on the soundtrack of ‘Thank God It’s Doomsday’, a 2005 episode of The Simpsons.

Joan Sutherland has received honorary degrees from universities in Australia and abroad. She was honoured as a Commander of the British Empire in 1961, a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1975 and a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1978. She received the Order of Merit in 1981. In 1989 the French Government awarded the Commandeur de l’Ordre National de Mérite to Dame Joan and her husband in recognition of their services to French music. In 2004 Sutherland received a Kennedy Center Honor in recognition of her achievements. Sutherland House at her old school, St Catherine’s in Sydney, and the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre at Penrith, New South Wales, are named in her honour.

Dame Joan Sutherland’s outstanding contribution to performing arts excellence was recognised by Live Performance Australia with its 2005 James Cassius Williamson Award.

In 1974, Clemence Dane wrote of Sutherland’s Covent Garden performance in Alcina 12 years before: ‘She sang like a mockingbird on a moonlight night, which is the loveliest sound I know. I got much the same pleasure from listening to her as years ago when, once or twice, I heard Melba sing. Perhaps there are two sorts of great singers, the Voices and the Skin-Changers. The Skin-Changers are born impersonators whose voices crown their acting gifts… But the Sutherlands and Melbas are Voices… they act with their voices, they be glamour through their voices, they make the audience laugh or shiver by means of their voices. It is a different art. The Voices are music.’

Dame Joan Sutherland – ‘La Stupenda’ – is now enjoying her retirement.

Frank Van Straten, 2007