La Stupenda : The Glory of Joan Sutherland

   in Opera Now (Nov, 2012)
The late, great Dame Joan Sutherland is shown here in four of her roles with Opera Australia, plus her famous 1983 concert in Sydney with Pavarotti. The earliest film is Lucrezia Borgia (1977), and we progress through La fille du régiment and Adriana Lecouvreur, one of Sutherland’s final assumptions, to her farewell Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots (1990).

The stage productions probably seemed rather dated at the time as Sutherland and her husband, the conductor Richard Bonynge, were never renowned for their spirit of dramatic adventurousness; by now they are positively antediluvian. Dame Joan drifts around creaking sets looking magnificently upholstered, swagged, beaded, fringed and bewigged. She could …