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Dame
Joan Sutherland was born in Sydney, Australia in 1926
and was swept up by the glamour of being an opera star, being rather akin Australia's
other Grande Dame of Opera, Dame Nellie
Melba. She didn't make it into her own school choir: she was
told that her voice was too loud and that it drowned out the other
singers. In October of 1954, after winning a position with the Royal
Opera House, Covent Garden, she married Australian pianist Richard Bonynge,
who later became her personal conductor. "I used to cheat
her," Bonygne was once quoted as saying. "I'd play an
aria a third higher and tell her to go and sing over the other side of the
room because I could hear her more clearly away from the piano. And when
I'd tell her she'd just sung D- flat, 'Oh, what nonsense,' she'd say, 'I
didn't, I can't get up there'." A great bel canto rival
to Callas, she was dubbed La Stupenda
by adoring Italian audiences. However, for all of the pomp and
circumstance, it is rumored that this Diva has terrible gas. |
