La Stupenda dragged bel canto back onto the world’s stages
Dame Joan Sutherland (1926–2010), an Australian dramatic coloratura, helped revive bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through the 1980s. Fans called her La Stupenda. Critics praised agility, trills, and a blazing top—while needling her fuzzy diction—and she became the first Australian Grammy winner for a 1961 classical vocal performance.
Born in Sydney to Scottish parents, she grew up copying the vocal exercises of her mother, a mezzo-soprano who never sang professionally. Serious lessons with John and Aida Dickens began at eighteen, and she debuted in concert as Purcell's Dido in 1947. She won the Sun Aria in 1949, finished third that year in the £1,000 Mobil Quest and took it outright in 1950, then made her stage debut in Eugene Goossens's Judith in 1951.
In London she studied at the Royal College of Music and joined Covent Garden as a utility soprano, first appearing on 28 October 1952 in the Magic Flute role of the First Lady and soon as Clotilde beside Maria Callas's Norma. Admiring Kirsten Flagstad, she first aimed to be a Wagnerian, and she created Jenifer in Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage in 1955.
Her husband, the conductor and pianist Richard Bonynge, whom she married in 1954, gradually persuaded her that her easy high notes and runs suited bel canto better than Wagner. The turning point was Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden in 1959, conducted by Tullio Serafin and staged by Franco Zeffirelli. Lucia then triumphed in Paris in 1960 and at La Scala and the Met in 1961, where standing-room fans queued from 7:30 in the morning and the Mad Scene earned a twelve-minute ovation.
Her 1960 double album The Art of the Prima Donna won the Grammy presented in 1962, the first for any Australian, and joined the national Sounds of Australia registry in 2011. Newspapers worldwide soon called her La Stupenda, though reviewers kept grumbling that her words were hard to make out.
Source: Joan Sutherland
