The Great Joan Sutherland at her 55 singing the aria and cabaletta from Verdi’s I Masnadieri, Live in New York in 1981!!! She is in Great Voice!! And the audience goes Mad!!! Hope to enjoy!!
I remember when this was broadcast - I was just a young kid who loved Joan Sutherland. I watched it with my father and brother and I went wild! Now I'm almost Joan's age myself! The part she sings at 7:38 is incredible to me. I wore out the VHS tape! The size of her voice and the precision of the fast singing is truly incredible!
I heard the original broadcast as well. I also attended Joan Sutherland's performance of this aria the same year at Brooklyn College in a recital with Richard Bonygne at the piano. Her voice seemed three-dimensionally suspended in air (as an opera critic said about Nellie Melba's voice) and, although there was no amplification whatsoever, it appeared as if Joan Sutherland's voice had a built-in microphone attached to it. Just phenomenal.
Thanks very much for this. An aria that displays Sutherland’s voice at its best. Sutherland was still singing Lucia at this age (55) and beyond. We will never see or hear anyone like her again. We should be forever grateful that she made so many recordings, so those of us after her time can get a glimpse of the live experience of hearing this extraordinary woman.
And luckily the Decca engineers captured her voice very accurately. Her recordings sound remarkably like she sounded in the theater. That’s not always the case - Nilsson simply didn’t sound like her Solti/Culshaw recordings. In the theater, her voice was much more rounded and warm. Sill’s engineers made her voice sound small and shrill. In the theater, it was a pleasant surprise to hear a much fuller and warmer voice.
@@wotan10950 some voices are meant to be heard live and no recording equipment can do them justice. Others are just fit for recording a masterpiece that sound engineers can manufacture in a top-selling LP/CD, and every now and then a voice is just the same live as on tape, which is not necessarily a good thing 😈
One of my favorite arias by one of my favorite sopranos. Thank you for including her walking out, and keeping the end applause!!!! The trills, the coloratura, the everything, SO GOOD!
I once met this woman for lunch during afternoon break from school... [she] purposely wore a set of false teeth 3-4 too big for her... quite a sight... she expected me to act as if nothing happened to be out of place... the shoppers at the Mall found this all very funny :). You know, I have listened to this for over 30 years now... 'howahHO -07:22---WahHHHOWWaHH' and 'AAAaaaaaAAaaaAAAA---8:39- HowAAoooAhhAHHHHH!' I dont know what is so funny 9:04 ... I still don't understand a word of it...
Thank you for this. I haven't heard her in this aria (or anyone else for that matter) in YEARS! (Like maybe 30!!). But I remember it as well as if I had just heard it yesterday. Sutherland has always been one of my favorites! Even today, my 4 favorite sopranos have always been Sutherland, Callas, Sills, and Caballe. Still haven't heard anyone who moves me as much as those 4. I miss them all!! Thank goodness for their recordings!!
Superb vocal art. Amazing agility and trills throughout the range. Astonishingly, she sang this equally as well in a 1989 concert in Newcastle, England - and arias from Norma, Fra Diavolo and the Lucia Mad Scene. What a voice and career it was!
Love this, though I think she herself never surpassed her 1966 recording of this she made for the Command Performance album. This cabaletta is what made me come to love Sutherland.
I saw Dame Joan sing this aria at a Brooklyn College recital. Are there enough superlatives to describe it?! After the performance, my girlfriend at the time kept trying to trill. She couldn’t believe anyone could sing like that!
@@misanthropelife Oh, don’t wish your life away; it goes too fast! I’m old now. The only advantage is that I saw the great names that we hark back to now: Sutherland, Sills, Freni, Price, Te Kanawa, Nilsson, Pavarotti, Domingo, Gedda, Kraus, Vickers, so many others.
@@wotan10950 you’re so lucky sir. I wasn’t even born yet when sutherland retired lols. Your experience might have been so wonderful. my dillema as someone younger is not to find the equivalent in this modern times. I may not be able to hear someone remotely as good as callas or sutherland during my lifetime. Though, maybe that’s the beauty of it, to wonder about the golden era of opera.
I've always thought that the single finest solo moment on this concert was Marilyn's La Donna del Lago aria .... and it was amazing indeed! ..... but this performance equaled it.
Yes, she trained her voice to become a coloratura dramatic soprano, but was it necessary to change the melody so much in the cabaletta just to show off what she could do? I'm not sure Verdi would've approved it, this is not Semiramide, Lucia or Sonnambula, where the audience grew accustomed to variations that showcase the soprano possibilities.
