It takes some real talent and raw power to overpower a full orchestra and Madam Sutherland is one such person to be able to do it. She is unmatched in her power, delivery, and technique on stage. Rest well Dame Sutherland, thank you for your music, may the heavens ring with your almighty voice.
I'm surprised that no one is mentioning Sutherlands recording of Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffman" which have some of her best high notes and trills ever. There is of course the entire role of the "doll", which she is justly famous for. But there is also a massive high B in a duet with Domingo that is thrillingly dramatic with an amount of "squillo" that any dramatic soprano would be proud of. There is also the trio where Sutherland caps the whole thing off with a stunning high B and then a high C# that loses no power, brilliance or beauty at any point. What is truly amazing is that right after this amazingly powerful trio, Sutherland proceeds too end this with a death scene in the most delicate of voices capping it all off with the most amazing trill ever heard. The trill starts off slowly, alternating between the pitches and then increases in speed until we hear the famous Sutherland trill in all its glory, perfectly placed fully articulated and sustained with no loss of speed or volume until she decides it's time to let go of it. I was privileged to hear Joan live in the opera house many times in my youth, and I am so lucky that her voice during her peak was captured on so many recordings so that I can relive so many wonderful moments in the theatre.
Joan was the first (maybe ever) soprano to sing ALL 3 roles in Hoffman. Richard Bonynge convinced Convent Garden that Joan could sing them (they very very doubtful)Of course when she did sing them magnificently,it opened up the way for the famous Lucia's, and as they say the rest is history.
Sills did all the heroines, and others have done the same but none approach Dame Joan. Damrau will attempt it next year at LA Opera but one doubts it will very satisfying. As for history, it's true that Dame Joan sang Olympia and Antonia separately at Covent Garden but the other roles (Giulietta and Stella) were added many years after the first Lucia.
and the d that dame joan sings at the end of the "roland..." scene, that is stunning. she first sing several high c in staccato, goes on to an e and then end it with a d. i think esclamonde is joan's best role. when she sang it in san fran in 1974, my eyes almost popped out of its socket when she hit those notes d and above. live sutherland really show the hugeness of her voice better than the studio recordings. it was a broadcast so someone has to have a recording of that.
That last one... she was SIXTY and still able to hit a top D that just grows as it goes on! Of course the voice wasn't the same as it had been twenty years earlier, but plenty of people half her age would kill for those notes!
super........impresionantisssssssssimo......una quedada vocal........imposible de catalogar......ella es el icono vocal .......en el canto....el paralelo... con la monalisa.....o gioconda.........joan sutherland......la voz que no se puede catalogar....con la sonrisa incapaz de escrutar.....ella es la voz sin paralelo...el canto eterno del poder.....fluye y fluye a traves del tiempo dejando a todos con la boca abierta intentando penetrar entre tantas notas imposibles.......
As of today, looking back, only two sopranos are in a class of their own. Sutherland and Birgit Nilsson. With only 5 years age difference , they dominated the 60-ties, 70-ties and into the 80ties. Birgit ended her opera career in her mid 60ties with Electra in Frankfurt. But continued with concerts to her 70-ties. Joan also in her mid 60ties, the Huguenots in Sydney. An interessting fact is that both discovered their perfect head voice, when they had a flu, and forced to find a way around it in the " mask", and stayed with that technique. I have heard both of them live in various operas. Joan rocked the Opera world by singing coloratura on full voice. Not really heard before. Birgit, a massive, powerful voice, range from G3 Salome to F6, my favourite with Joan La Traviata, and Lucia with Birgit Tanhauser and Isolde. Can still feel how I was pinned to my seat, hearing both of them live back in the 60ties and 70-ties. There are many other fabulous sopranos, Moffo, De Los Angeles, Milanov, Freni, etc. deliberate ly left Callas out, only a few recordings from the early 50ties with Karajan, was excellent, one soprano people rave about, Caballe, maybe on recordings, where you can turn the dial, make a small voice bigger, but Caballe live, you need a front seat to hear her, quite pathetic.
She nailed the high notes in the early years, and the late years. (With a hammer!!!!) LOL. It seemed the voice stabilised itself. And funny enough in live recordings she was better then the official studio recording, Beatrice...much better.....considering the conditions she sung.....hail La Stupenda.
Her D's in Norma are just stellar in my perception. I definitely tend to prefer D's over E's in general and by hear especially. They have much more of that mighty, obliterating, humongous sound. The E's, though only full step higher, sounded a bit thinner and a bit less mighty. The studio version of Norma from 1964 that she recorded includes her in my mind absolute best high D ever. That sound is mind blowing and fucking heroic. The only high E's I truly like equally by her are in her 1960 studio semiramide. That one though must have sounded incomprehensibly loud and piercing in the recording venue. Singing isn't just about high notes. True. But, if executed truly well resonated and projected, they have a exciting and fascinating thing to them. But only then. If not, they sound squealy and nasal and disgusting. In general the art of singing and the public taste have deteriorated. Incredible to see what mediocre and unintelligent singing and performing is celebrated as outstanding and put to absurd fame nowadays. And the very few ones who had fantastic voices destroyed them by singing after the public demand instead of singing healthy and perfecting the technique style to enable the voice to grow and blossom. Sutherland had her absolute vocal prime when she was in her early 30s until her early 40s. Nowadays singers in their early 40s often sound wasted. Not to mention their early 50s. When Sutherland still had a solid, agile, healthy voice. Without diction but that is commonly known and forgiven by some and judged by others.
I like your analysis and the many points you discuss. Especially when you say that singing is not just high notes. In 1975 when I started listening to opera I thought Sutherland was a good singer. A few years later I started to take classical voice training and my teacher told me to listen to Callas because of her strong chest voice development. The chest voice is the fondation of the voice. This is what you developed first and then develop the other register. It allows for clear singing. Sutherland was one of the first of her era to sing without a chest voice. This is why she had a bad diction and could only sing on one-pseudo-proxy-one-fits-all vowel. Maybe she had great top notes but the fact that the rest of the voice was small, weak, and muffled never pleased me. Then I discovered many old singers that had good chest voice (which was the norm than) and I cannot listen to singers without it. So this why I never listen to singers in the last 30 years.
@@marcelbureau2753 1: that Sutherland sang without chest voice is simply not true. There is plenty of recorded proof that she did. Sure, she didn't particularly lean into it. and it also wasn't her trademark strength. But she definitely had it and used it. 2: Callas is a difficult singer in plenty of aspects. She was a proficient and supreme musician. in her prime she had a degree of control and accuracy to her voice that was spectacular. And of course she had her famous drama and vibrancy. But what she didn't have was a wise choice of repertory and also she didn't have a technique that allowed her to sing on that level for very long. Her vocal mastery around 1950 was a miracle. But she wasn't able to maintain that for more than maybe 5 years. Her high notes sounded forced and wobbly very very early in her career. She simply demanded too much from her voice. 3: Sutherland's middle range was certainly larger in size and resonance than it may seem on record. Her high range was exceptionally enormous. And in comparison to that her middle and low range of course sound smaller. But her voice was definitely substantial in the middle. Not so much in the low area. But that is rare in a soprano generally. 4: the old day singers get overly romanticised and idealised sometimes. Sure, there was a different vocal tradition dominant around 1900 compared to now. And also another one in 1800 compared to 1900. But they didn't all have deep and large chest voices. They leaned more into it and used it in higher pitches than most singers today do. But back then for sure there was a large amount of mediocre or plain bad singers as well.
@@schneevongestern9898 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ze8_wmwErFQ.htmlsi=ivwAZ9Ad48gbR08F As we can hear in this video she sang correctly and had a good technique at one point: very clear vowels and consonants and good low and middle ranges. It seems to have been the case only a few years at the beginning of her career. What happened after? How did she loose this nice strong and free voice?
Eb's ceased to be within her reach in the latter part of her career but I think her D6 actually improved in sound in the last decade of her career. They became bigger and steelier and the vibrato was much more delineate it then in her earlier career. You can hear an example of this at the last recorded high note in this collection
Sutherland is better LIVE because Decca's microphone can't take the young Sutherland's HUGE high notes. So they put her further away from the mic than her other colleagues. Hence, Pavarotti and Horne sound bigger than they did in real life. In the Opera House, the miking is equal, so her voice sounds much larger, It is significantly larger than Horne and Pavarotti if you heard her in her prime.
Tremendous fun. Thank you. Since you planned to include a few from the recording studio, I might have suggested the jaw-dropping Eb at the end of act 2 of Sonnambula (the second recording), and the other worldly E natural that hurls forth in the Milnes duet from the second Lucia. As for the Bolena high D, I'd switch out the recording for what she did live on television in 1985. Wow.
on opera brittanica's website spelling? they said dame joan once hit a F# in alt on stage. it didn't say in which role but they did say that she took on that high note. i like the high d that dame joan hit in a duet with base samual ramey 1960 puritani's entrance scene. it's on youtube. it is gigantic, lots of squillo and held long. she basically made that duet a monoet.
It is said that she hit an f natural on stage multiple times. And i believe it, in fact some of her early high e naturals are in fact f's because they are sharp. But i really dont think she ever hit a high f outside of the famous incident she had during a fight with her husband. She said in interviews she had sung many high fs but never an f sharp.
It's actually a Db (the pitch is wonky in the recording), but yes it's INSANELY impressive. I remember the first time I heard it, I had to play it back six or seven times. :P
You should include her E flats in Norma duet with Pollione...her studio recording and the LIVE...both with Alexander...HUGE and she held that E flat forever. And the 1963 Puritani duet with Gedda, a HUGE D from both Sutherland AND Gedda. Gedda's D is the best I've ever heard. And he is the only tenor who matched Sutherland's D in 1963.
I never liked opera except the high, lyric/coloratura sopranos like Sutherland and Callas, and the deep basses. The picture at the beginning of this video makes it look like Callas and Sutherland got along pretty well...did they? I know that Callas had a reputation as a moody and difficult diva, and if she did, it was well-deserved. Someone with her gift and talent has to have a big ego to go along with it, and I'm sure Sutherland was like that at least to some extent too. Anybody know if they indeed got along well?
bckm54 Sutherland respected Callas very much, even though both she and Richard say that her voice started to decline noticeably after 1955, which it did. From the small comments here and there from her, I think Callas was very intimidated by Sutherland -- at least from a vocal standpoint. Callas was known for being high strung and a perfectionist to a fault of coming off bitchy. From all accounts, Sutherland was extremely easy-going, very sweet, always making fun of herself, and doing needlepoint backstage between scenes. They couldn't have been more different! :)
Callas really wasn't as temperamental as the press made her out to be. She was a but moody but only to those who wronged her. Callas and Sutherland sang together in a production of Norma (Callas was Norma, Sutherland was Coltide) and they got along extremely well. Callas respected most of her colleagues, especially Joan. They both had immense respect for each other. Sutherland said Callas was wonderful backstage, and Callas once watched a dress rehearsal of Joan in Lucia and she congratulated her afterwards in her dressing room. I think they both saw the skill and talent in each other and respected it.
