Home City To Hear Joan Sutherland Again

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29746, 13 February 1962, Page 11

Home City To Hear Joan Sutherland Again

[By

MARGARET JONES]

(Associated Newspapers Feature Service)

Next June, one of the greatest singers Australia has ever produced will return home for the first time in 11 years. Joan Sutherland, trailing the glories of her triumphs in Europe and America, will make a concert tour of the Commonwealth, which promises to climax the musical season with excitement.

It is ironic that, for most Australians, it will be their first chance to hear in the flesh, the prima donna who has conquered the world's opera houses. Even for enthusiasts, she is no more than a voice on a record, a photograph in a newspaper, or the subject of fabulous travellers’ tales. When Joan Sutherland left Australia in 1951 she was an overweight awkward girl, with little to recommend her except a voice of exceptional though unrealised promise. She returns the epitome of the diva: a statuesque figure with red hair piled high, a flash of temperament to spice her character, and a voice which is one of the phenomena of the century. Rivals Callas She is acknowledged to rival the great Callas, who for years had reigned supreme in the coloratura field. Many critics consider her voice is far better, though she cannot yet equal the Greek soprano’s formidable stage presence. She will bring back home with her one legacy of her

upbringing; an unabashedly Australian voice and manner, with a freshness of verbal expression which has often startled the type of interviewer who tends to regard opera as a sacred cow. Most at home in the role of the distraught heroine, and capable of the greatest tenderness of interpretation, she can still refer coolly afterwards to the character she has created as a “demented dame” or a “loony lady ” Two Svengalis With Miss Sutherland when she returns will be her husband, Richard Bonynge, one of the two men who have played Svengali to her Trilby. The other is the magnetic Italian director, Franco Zeffirelli, who has breathed new life into more than one dusty or neglected operatic masterpiece. Bonynge is largely responsible for releasing the full power of his wife’s voice. Zeffirelli taught her how to behave on stage, nd cultivated her dramatic potential. Often taller than the diminutive tenors who partnered her, Miss Sutherland was always self-conscious when she was singing until Zeffirelli directed her. It was he who created and staged the magnificent “Lucia di Lammermoor” which set London on fire in 1959 and established Joan Sutherland as a singer of world calibre. It was all a long way from Sydney, a job in an offce, and lessons at the Conservatorium. Mother A Singer Joan Sutherland was born in Sydney in 1926. Her father died when she was a child, and most of the influence in her early life came from her mother, Muriel Alston, a former concert singer. Mrs Sutherland had given up her own career, but she watched carefully over her daughter’s promising voice, anxious that it should not be over-developed or overstrained. “My mother wouldn’t let me study singing until I was 18.” Jean Sutherland says. “She was afraid that my voice might be forced or trained in the wrong direction. “But she guided me into a mezzo range with scales and breathing. I never dared to try beyond a top C. I was too afraid for years.” Worked In Office

When she was 16, Joan enrolled in a secretarial college, and later went to work in a city office every day from her home in Woollahra. About this time, she met Richard Bonynge, who was then studying at the Conservatorium and showing signs of unusual talent as a pianist. During the day, Joan worked for a harware wholesaler. At night, she studied singing, entered competitions, and gained experience with groups like the Bach Choral Society. She still considered herself to be a mezzo-soprano, but her teachers realised that she was forcing her lower register, and persuaded her to lift her voice. First Big Chance Her first big chance came when she was chosen as soprano soloist in a Wagnerian recital in Sydney Town Hall. That was in 1947, when Joan Sutherland was 21.

In the same year, she won the women’s section of the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s contest in the City of Sydney Eisteddfod. As a result, she began to receive regular broadcasting engagements.

Like most other ambitious young singers, her eyes were set on the two great plums of the Sydney musical year: the “Sun” aria competition, and the Mobil Quest. Won Both Contests

It took her four years to carry off the “Sun” award, but she finally won the competition in 1949. The following year, she made it a double by winning the Mobil Quest.

On the night, 200 telegrams poured in congratulating her. They came from everyone who knew her in Woollahra. including the staff of the local post-office, the butcher, and the baker. It was a small taste of fame, but heady enough for a girl in her early twenties

The next move was the sadly obvious one which has robbed Australia of most of her great artists. Joan Sutherland took her prize money and her savings, and went to England to further her career

In 1952, she joined the Covent Garden opera comoany and made her debut in “The Magic Flute.” The quality of her voice was obvious from the beginning. and it was not long before she was singing major roles —another Australian star among the galaxy already twinkling in the Royal Opera House. In London, she met Richard Bonynge again. ’They were married in 1954. and their son, Adam, was born in 1956 It was in this period that her style began to change completely. Until now, she had always thought of herself as a dramatic soprano, with a big. rather wild voice. She saw herself as Brunnhilde, and certainly, with her commanding height and strong features, she had the stage presence for the part. Richard Bonynge, however, had different ideas. “Using Half Talent”

“When I heard the incredible things she could do with her voice when she was rattling in the kitchen or soaking in the bathtub, I knew she was using only half her talent," he says. He believed she could convert herself into a spectacular coloratura soprano, but he

had a hard time making his wife believe it. “We fought like cats and dogs over it,” she says ruefully. “It took Richard three years to convince me.”

Mr Bonynge’s belief in his wife’s talents was backed by a consuming interest in the florid, neglected, bel canto operas of composers like Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, which offered enormous opportunities to the coloratura soprano. Most of them were never performed, because few singers had the range or the virtuosity to do justice to them. Effect On Personality Patiently Mr Bonynge led his wife on to vocal extravagances which she had not believed possible, until it seemed that one of the legendary divas of the great days of bel canto had come to life again. The change in style had a magical effect on Joan Sutherland’s personality, as well as her career. A Sydney woman who was in London during this period said: “I first heard Sutherland in Wagner about five years ago. She was a big girl who moved rather awkwardly and, though her voice was excellent, she was not particularly memorable as a performer. Then suddenly, one did begin to notice her, both as an actress and as a singer.

“I heard her practically sing everyone else off the stage in the Covent Garden production of ‘Othello,’ though the soprano role is by no means the most important. “In 1958, she sang one aria only in ‘Samson,’ but it brought the house down every night. A year ater, in 1959, she sang ‘Lucia.’ The rest is practically history.” Callas Enthused The news that an up-and-coming Australian was to sing “Lucia” brought the great Callas to London. She saw the dress rehearsal, and afterwards went backstage. “You were wonderful, just wonderful,” she told Sutherland.

The audience on the first night agreed, and so did producers and opera house managers everywhere. In 1960, the Glyndeboume Opera revived the Bellini opera, “I Puritani,” especially for Sutherland. In this she scored another success as a demented heroine, managing, despite her impressive height and size, to give a most touching impression of fragile vulnerability. In the same year, she brought audiences to their feet at the Edinburgh Festival. and in Venice, where she sang Handel’s Alcina.

And to crown it all, in a glittering debut at La Scala, she conquered the difficult and capricious Italian audience, who threw flowers instead of insults at her feet. “La Stupenda,” they called her, in admiration of a great voice, and of a physical stature which was so longer a cause of embarrassment but of pride. A year later, last May, they were murmuring it again in some awe. Sutherland had given the final touch to the role of prima donna by displaying a little of the temperament for which Callas had long been famous. She walked oft tlie stage of La Fenice opera house, Venice, in a huff, after a disagreement with the conductor. The incident was soon forgotten, and the clamour for the services of “La Sutherland” was resounding all over Europe. Metropolitan Debut As the world knows, she reached the climax of her career in New York, when, singing Lucia, she took 21 curtain calls after her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. When she left the opera house, she and her husband were mobbed. They had to fight their way to their car through the clutching hands of hysterical fans. “It was terrifying,” she said afterwards. “Even when we were in. the car I thought they would crush it.” Success has obviously made a good deal of difference to the way the Bony ng e family lives. Until recently, home has been a crowded five-room flat in Kensington, full of books and records, and portraits of the great exponents of bel canto of the past, collected by Bichard Bonynge. Now they have a house in Switzerland, a 14-room villa overlooking Lake Maggiore, i and a drive of only 90 min-1 utes from La Scala, in Milan. | They bought the villa partly to escape from the horrors of the English climate for a portion of the year, and partly as a permanent home for their son, Adam. Now that Joan Sutherland, the girl from Woolahra, has become Sutherland the diva, her engagements stretch for years ahead. The great capitals of the world acclaim her. Only Sydney, her own home town, remains to hear her, and be conquered like the rest.