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Joan Sutherland was born on November 7, 1926 in Sydney. Perhaps the most beautiful voice of the 20th Century and certainly one of the great singers of all time, Joan Sutherland developed the art of the prima donna to soaring heights and gave us in the process one of the most joyful gifts the world of opera has ever known. She helped opera rediscover a long-lost world of beauty, the age of bel canto. Its meaning, beautiful singing, has never been more disarmingly, sweetly explained as when this unassuming woman sings. As her repertory grew in every direction from operatic music to more recent musical comedies and even duets with her neighbor, Noel Coward, Sutherland's singing continues to inspire the deep affection of music lovers everywhere. In the United States, as in her native Australia, in Europe and around the world, millions have learned to love opera and love it forever after witnessing the miracle of the meeting of this musician and great music. From her United States debut with the Dallas Opera in 1960, to her other triumphs in the major American opera houses from San Francisco to Miami and from Seattle to New York, Sutherland set new standards for opera and inspired an entire generation of American artists. Her inspiration continues through her unsurpassed recorded legacy. Her recorded or filmed interpretations, and often reinterpretations, of the major soprano roles thrill and surprise with every new hearing: Bellini's "Norma, I Puritani," "Beatrice di Tenda" and "La Sonnambula"; Leo Delibes' "Lakme"; Donizetti's "Anna Bolena", "L'Elisir d'amore, "La fille du Regiment," "Maria Stuarda" and, of course, "Lucia di Lammermoor"; Gounod's "Faust"; Handel's "Alcina," "Julius Caesar," "Messiah," "Rodelinda and Athalia"; Lehar's "The Merry Widow"; Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots"; Mozart's "Don Giovanni"; Offenbach's "Contes d'Hoffmann"; Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites"; Puccini's "Turandot" and "Suor Angelica"; Strauss' "Die Fledermaus"; Thomas' "Hamlet"; Verdi's "Ernani, I Masnadieri," "Il Trovatore," "La Traviata," "Rigoletto," and "Requiem"; and even Wagner's "Siegfried," where Sutherland's studio reprise of her early success as the magical Wood Bird of the Rhineland raised the bar for any future assumption of this unlikely bel canto role. Her studio recitals stand as lessons in the ineffable spell of beauty. Her landmark album, The Art of the Prima Donna, never out of print in four decades, is perhaps the single most influential classical recording for a generation of budding sopranos. Along with the visionary Age of Bel Canto, conducted by Sutherland's husband and mentor Richard Bonynge, The Art of the Prima Donna whetted the world's appetite for what was then rare repertory of the 18th and 19th centuries and set the adventurous agendas of opera companies everywhere. Sutherland began her career in 1947 as a precocious talent and ended it on a high note in 1990 with a miraculous instrument that was peerless. Singing Bellini's fiendishly difficult I Puritani at the Metropolitan Opera in 1986, days after celebrating her 25th anniversary with the company, Sutherland was in such brilliant vocal state that Donald Henahan of The New York Times described her as "surely the youngest-sounding 60-year-old soprano in modern operatic history." The following year, after a Kennedy Center concert, Joseph McLellan happily reported in The Washington Post "the Australian soprano's richness of tone is remarkable throughout her wide range. Her agility in the stratospheric regions above the treble staff remains amazing, not merely for a voice as big as hers but for any human voice at all." That awe, along with gratitude and smiles, is the common response to any Sutherland performance. Her Lucia is a heartbreaking study in vulnerability expressed through purely musical terms. Her Norma, another signature role, is forever a young, beautiful priestess fallen into unforgivable sin. In both Bellini roles, as well as in so much of the repertory, Sutherland's singing defines the genre: every note is polished, her trills are clear, her divisions insolent, her legato a marvel, her voice one of nature's most incredible sounds.
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