Top 10 Amazing Facts about Dame Joan Sutherland

Top 10 Amazing Facts about Dame Joan Sutherland

Sutherland, Joan (1926) is an amazing Australian-born singer, particularly renowned for her work in bel canto operas, who became one of the most celebrated opera stars of the 20th century. Name variations: Dame Joan Sutherland

Her father William Sutherland, a Scottish immigrant to Australia at age 22, became a respected businessman in Sydney, running a tailor shop.

He married Muriel Alston, who gave birth to two children, Sutherland’s sister Barbara in 1922 and Joan in 1926.

Joan attended St. Catherine’s School, Waverly, Australia; Metropolitan Secretarial School, Sydney; Rathbone School of Dramatic Art, Sydney; Covent Garden Opera school, London.

She married Richard Bonynge, on October 16, 1954, in Ladbroke Grove, Great Britain and bore one son, Adam.

She possessed a voice of beauty and power, combining extraordinary agility, accurate intonation, a splendid trill and a tremendous upper register, although music critics often complained about the imprecision of her diction.

Below are amazing top 10 facts about Dame Joan Sutherland.

1. Joan Sutherland inherited her talent from her Mother

Portrait of Dame Joan Sutherland. Image by Allen Warren from Wikimedia

Some of Joan Sutherland’s early memories were of hearing her mother sing. Muriel Sutherland was a mezzo-soprano who would “have made an opera singer.”

Muriel had offers in her youth, to move to Europe in order to study music in London or Paris.

Although she chose to stay in Australia, she practised singing nearly every day, even as a mother. As young as age three, Sutherland loved to sit next to her mother at the piano while Muriel sang.

Joan sang along and by age seven she knew arias from operas such as Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots and Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia.

2. Joan was Denied Lead roles in School because of her Weight

Sutherland showed interest in performing in school plays although she felt gauche and overweight as a teenager. 

She admired the young American singer and motion-picture actress Deanne Durbin and the opera singer Grace Moore . She talked of appearing one day on the stage of Covent Garden, the main London opera house.

However, Sutherland was denied roles in school plays because of her size.  She was thrown out of the school choir because her voice drowned out the others.

Muriel, who feared that her daughter’s voice could be ruined if it were “forced” prematurely, would allow her to have private voice lessons until she was 18.

3. Dame Joan Sutherland Gifted the world with Super Debuts

Image by WikimediaImages from Pixabay

Joan Sutherland made her public debut as a singer in the chorus of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (1946); made her solo debut the same year in concert performances of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Handel’s Acis and Galatea; won Mobil Quest Vocal Contest (1950); moved to London (1951); hired by Covent Garden Opera, London (1952);

She debuted at Paris Opera (1960); debuted at La Scala Opera in Milan, Italy, and New York City’s Metropolitan Opera (1961); triumphed in her first return tour of her native Australia (1965); named Dame Commander of the British Empire (1979); named “Australian of the Year” (1989); retired from performing (1990).

4. The Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre was Named for her

Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre. Image by Sardaka from Wikimedia

Acclaimed architect Phillip Cox designed the Joan Centre. He also designed Sydney Football Stadium, the Australian National Maritime Museum and Melbourne Park Tennis Centre.

The Joan is the only cultural centre in the world to be named after Dame Joan Sutherland.

There are 3 performance spaces in the Joan – the 660 Richard Bonynge Concert Hall, the 375-seat Q Theatre and the 90-seat Allan Mullins Studio, as well as 27 teaching rooms.

5. Dame Joan Sutherland elected to Retired in 1990

Retired Joan Sutherland. Image by Allen Warren Wikimedia

Sutherland chose to retire in 1990, making her final appearances in the Sydney Opera House in Les Huguenots, followed by a gala appearance at Covent Garden in which she sang duets with Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne.

Joan Sutherland’s last performance was as Marguerite de Valois (Les Huguenots) at the Sydney Opera House in 1990, at the age of 64.

Her last public appearance, however, took place in a gala performance of Die Fledermaus on New Year’s Eve, 1990, at Covent Garden, where she was accompanied by her colleagues Pavarotti and the mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.

A retired Sutherland found herself in demand as a judge in music contests around the globe.

6. Joan Sutherland was one of the most highly paid Opera singer in the World

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

The decade of the 1970s marked the most active period of her career, as she journeyed around the globe for opera and concert performances.

 At age 50, she admitted to feeling a “little long in the tooth” for some roles, but her asking price for each appearance, estimated at between $5,000 and $10,000, made her one of the two most highly paid opera singers of the decade.

She had become, claimed her husband, “the singer with the widest repertoire of any singer who has ever lived.” Her international reputation had risen to the point that she could begin to become a mentor to lesser-known singers

7. Dame Joan Sutherland Mentored renown Tenor Luciano Pavarotti

Joan Sutherland’s friend Pavarotti. Image by Mariomanias from Wikimedia

Joan “sponsored” Luciano Pavarotti in early recordings. He was the emerging tenor who became internationally famous in the early 1960s, thanks in part to soprano Joan Sutherland.

Sutherland was an imposing diva, substantially taller than many of her co-stars. She championed Pavarotti’s talent and appreciated his five-foot-nine-inch frame. The two performed together throughout their careers.

In 1965, Sutherland toured Australia with the Sutherland-Williamson Opera Company. Pavarotti was in the entourage. Every performance featuring Sutherland sold out.

Luciano Pavarotti once called Sutherland the “Voice of the Century”, while Montserrat Caballé described the Australian’s voice as being like “heaven”.

8.  She was married to Richard Bonynge

From left: Tenor Colin Lee, soprano Pretty Yende, conductor Richard Bonynge, mezzo-soprano Violina Anguelov and baritone George Stevens. Image by Neil Barry Moss from Wikimedia

Richard Alan Bonynge AC, CBE is an Australian conductor and pianist. He is the widower of Australian dramatic coloratura soprano Dame Joan Sutherland. Bonynge conducted virtually all of Sutherland’s operatic performances from 1962 until her retirement in 1990.

Bonynge made his Metropolitan Opera debut on 12 December 1966 and his last performance there was on 6 April 1991. Most of those performances he conducted there between 1966 and 1987 were with Sutherland singing.

Commencing in 2007, he has conducted a series of performances in a few opera houses around the U.S.  and now is mostly involved with the Opera Australia company

9. Joan Sutherland has one of the Most Sought Album

Image by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pixabay

In 1960, Joan Sutherland recorded the album The Art of the Prima Donna, which remains today one of the most recommended opera albums ever recorded: the double LP set won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance – Vocal Soloist in 1962.

Joan Sutherland sang a superb Alcina at La Fenice, Venice, where she was nicknamed La Stupenda (“The Stupendous One”) in the same year. Sutherland would soon be praised as La Stupenda in newspapers around the world.

10.  Dame Joan Sutherland Received many Awards and Recognitions in her Lifetime

Hommage to Dame Joan Sutherland. Paris Opera Awards. Image by Awardsopera Wikimedia

During her career and after, Sutherland received many honours and awards. In 1961, Sutherland was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

She was named the Australian of the Year in 1961. On 9 June 1975, Dame Joan was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.

She was further elevated from Commander to Dame Commander on 30 December 1978. On 24 November 1991, the Queen bestowed on Dame Joan the Order of Merit.

She won many prestigious awards, including a ‘Grammy’, made an appearance on the ‘Queen’s Honour List’ and Birthday Honours List and received a posthumous induction into ‘Gramophone’ magazine’s first ‘Hall of Fame’.

The daughter of a gifted singer, she studied piano and voice with her mother until 1946, when she won a vocal competition and began studying voice with John and Aida Dickens.

Sutherland ranked as one of the first ladies of international opera, yet she never behaved like a prima donna. Throughout her career, she would be found joking and laughing uproariously in her dressing-room only minutes after giving an overwhelming performance of some tragic operatic heroine.