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Dateline: 12th October, 2010
Dame Joan Sutherland (1925 - 2010) Opera star Joan Sutherland, nicknamed "La Stupenda" after her Venetian debut in Handel's Alcina in 1960 at La Fenice, has died at the age of 84. She became an international star playing Lucia in Franco Zeffirelli's new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden in 1959, a role with which she has been associated ever since. She was the leading light of the bel canto world, following in the footsteps of Maria Callas almost a decade earlier. She was born in Sydney of Scottish parents and began her musical career singing Dido in a concert version of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in her home town in 1947. In 1951 she went to London to stuady at the Opera School of the Royal College of Music. A year later she became a "utility soprano" at the Royal Opera House and made her debut as First Lady in The Magic Flute. Later that year she appeared alongside Callas in Norma. Her first leading role at the Royal Opera House was Amelia in Un ballo in maschera in 1952. At first she saw herself as a Wagnerian but was convinced by her husband Richard Bonynge (whom she married in 1954) to try the bel canto repertoire and, in 1957, first appeared in Handel's Alcina with the Handel Opera Society. She toured internationally thereafter, singing many of the leading soprano roles, and made her final full-length dramatic appearance at the age of 63 as Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots at the Sydney Opera House in 1990, although her actual final stage appearance was as a "guest" in a gala performance of Die Fledermaus on New Year's Eve, 1990, at Covent Garden, accompanied by her Luciano Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne. In 1961, she was made a CBE and was elevated to DBE in the New Year's Honours List of 1979. She was named a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1975 and received the Order of Merit in 1991. She dies on 10th October, 2010, and is is survived by her husband, son Adam, her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren.
Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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