A Swan Song to Joan Sutherland, a Detroit Favorite

Dame Joan Sutherland, who died on Oct. 10 at the age of 83, was such a force of nature that she could, in fact, compete with nature.
3247

Her finely sculpted trill was so precise that it could stop a thrush in mid flight. Finches had nothing on her elegant warbling; just listen to her interplay with the flute solo in the Mad Scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. You could swear she was a songbird herself, including her skyscraping high E-flat.

In part, her voice was God given. But Sutherland achieved success by dint of hard work, aided to a large degree by her husband — conductor, pianist, and vocal coach Richard Bonynge — who survives her. She worked diligently, and she ascended to the operatic apex.

Detroit had many opportunities to hear the fruits of the Australian soprano’s labor. In 1984, she accepted Michigan Opera Theatre General Director David DiChiera’s invitation to sing the title role in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, a role with a stunning display of coloratura fireworks. She sang gloriously, even though she lost her head at the end.
Five years later, she returned to Masonic Temple in MOT’s production of Bellini’s Norma. Yes, the bloom had gone off the rose, but Sutherland still had more voice left than many sopranos half her age. I’ll never forget her, bathed in pale light, singing the elegant hymn to the moon, “Casta diva,” with astonishing breath support.
Sutherland retired in 1990, but she came back to Detroit at the grand opening of the Detroit Opera House, cutting the ribbon and thereby christening Detroit’s temple to song.
I first heard Sutherland at Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium in 1979. I sat transfixed as she spun off difficult arias and songs by the bel-canto triumvirate of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, a music stand supporting the sheet music in front of her. During one of her encores, Balfe’s “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls,” sung without the aid of a score, she suddenly stopped and said, “You see why I use sheet music; I’ve forgotten the words!” The audience laughed and applauded her frankness. She started again and sang it to perfection. It was a wonderfully human moment from a very regal woman.
That evening, I joined a queue backstage to meet Sutherland and her husband. They graciously signed my program, which I treasure to this day.
In 1964, when Sutherland was at her vocal prime, she appeared in Detroit as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s weeklong tour, which was held each spring. The opera was Lucia di Lammermoor. A fellow opera buff who saw her then told me years later, “The crowd went wild. She took our breath away.”

Yes, her recordings can still do that, to some extent. But there’s no substitute for a live appearance, and Dame Joan gave metro Detroiters several of them, all memorable, and all breathtaking.