“There are those singers who you listen to in order to imitate, in order to get stylistic references – and then there are singers who you listen to in order to slobber! Just listen to what someone who lived on this earth was capable of doing!” When I meet soprano Lisette Oropesa to discuss Joan Sutherland, it’s at the Royal Opera House, where the Australian diva made her sensational breakthrough in Lucia di Lammermoor in 1959.
“When I made my Covent Garden debut as Lucia, Sutherland came up a lot in interviews,” she explains. Having surely been one of those interlocutors, I apologise. “And you’re so blessed that that’s your reference, that you have this pinnacle, if you will, of performance, of interpretation, of what a voice is capable of that nobody has ever been able to replicate. The technique, the runs, the accuracy, the beauty of tone, the trills, the staccati, the high notes…
“It’s wonderful when artists become so prominent that they get to be the vehicles for repertoire. I think with bel canto, you do need a vehicle, you need that Ferrari at the helm: Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas, Montserrat Caballé and Beverly Sills – a pantheon of artists that made it their business to champion this repertoire.
“The kind of strengths that Callas had as an artist are not the same ones that Sutherland had,” Oropesa reflects, “even though they were both phenomenal bel canto interpreters for different reasons. For my personal taste, Sutherland's claim to glory, if I may reduce it to one thing, was her sheer vocal ability, the skill level, not only blessed with a glorious instrument, but blessed with an incredible ability to use it beyond what was normally conventional for an instrument of that type.”
I’ve asked Oropesa to put together a playlist to mark the centenary of Sutherland’s birth, and we talk about her strengths which, as she points out, weren’t just technical. “I mean, her Doll Song is technically incredible, but listen also to the sensitivity that you hear in Sonnambula, in Lucia and Puritani. Sutherland wasn’t just a machine gun who was capable of singing phenomenal coloratura, but she also had a line and a colour to the voice that had almost a sad tone to it as well as the sunshine.
“The times I’ve tried to imitate Sutherland, I’ve just ended up sounding like an idiot,” she laughs. “Singers imitate accidentally. That’s just how we learn. It’s how all humans learn to communicate. But when I listen to her, it's more about marvelling at the possibilities of the human voice, but without trying to say, oh, I need to do that.”
And now, over to Lisette:
1Puccini: “In questa reggia” (Turandot)
When I was in high school, I was just popping around the record shop and I saw Turandot sung by Joan Sutherland. I thought, wait, isn’t Sutherland a famous coloratura? Weird! It was the first time I ever did a double–take, the first surprise I ever experienced with Sutherland because before that it was all coloratura. She wasn’t one to say, here’s my lane and I’m going to stay in it. That recording with Luciano Pavarotti as Calaf and Montserrat Caballé as Liù… It’s kind of the greatest thing ever.
2Rossini: “Bel raggio lusinghier” (Semiramide)
There’s a version of this Rossini aria where she has these high E naturals. People don't understand how high E natural is for a soprano – it’s unbelievable. I cap out at an E flat and even then that’s praying every time. But this is an easy, fresh, fabulous, brilliant E natural, approached in two different ways in this aria. I don’t understand how that’s even possible. Yet it just seems so easy. So that was a recording that I just listen to for sheer “Holy crap!”.
3Bellini: “Mira, o Norma” (Norma)
I’ve chosen the duet “Mira o Norma” because my grandfather was a huge fan of the recording with Sutherland and Marilyn Horne, so it’s an old memory. I’ve been listening to bits of their recording recently because I’m also studying Norma. The two of them and their duets here are just stunning.
4Meyerbeer: “O beau pays” (Les Huguenots)
There’s a TV clip of Sutherland singing this, many years after she first sang Les Huguenots, and before she opens her mouth, she tells Beverly Sills, “I’m gonna try to sing ‘O beau pays’”, like, I’m gonna make an attempt. I’ll do my best… and it’s brilliant. I remember listening to her earlier version and then this one, and the way she was able to preserve so much the integrity of her sound, the quality of her sound, is remarkable. She didn't ever abuse her voice.
5Bellini: “Son vergin vezzosa” (I puritani)
When I was studying Puritani for the first time, I tried listening to the Callas recording – the younger Callas, a much darker, heavier voice – and I remember needing to hear someone with more sparkle in this voice so that I could get ideas of what to do for the variations, because Callas didn’t do a lot in “Son vergin vezzosa”. And Sutherland does beautiful variations (Sills did even more). Listening to Sutherland gave me ideas about what embellishments would be cool to try. In fact, I often get embellishment ideas from Sutherland. Just as musicologists do today, her husband Richard Bonynge encouraged variations in the repeats of cabalettas, so that's why I put “Son vergin vezzosa” on here, because everybody else sings it very plain and Sutherland does something with it. I listen to that recording a heck of a lot.
6Donizetti: Mad Scene (Lucia di Lammermoor)
I hate to say it, but Lucia di Lammermoor is such a mainstream opera that it’s almost short-changing Sutherland to only associate her with that role. Lucia is like the band that gets the hit song on the radio, but their album has a better song on it that never made the radio. I feel like Lucia was her number one hit, but actually there were other hits. The role of Lucia was symbolic for her, iconic really, very much as it was for Callas, but even more for Sutherland because she was able to unapologetically make it into a coloratura vehicle, a coloratura showcase, without apologising. Where Callas, I think, saw it more as a dramatic showcase, Sutherland was, “This is a coloratura showcase, dammit, so we’re gonna sing coloratura.” And I feel that it takes courage to say, I’m gonna sing my high notes now, and you’re all gonna wait!
7Bellini: “Ah! non giunge uman pensiero” (La sonnambula)
The cabaletta “Ah! non giunge” from La sonnambula is so challenging. Sutherland puts in an F at the end, which I don’t do – I can’t do – so I don’t focus on the F, but I focus instead on the variations which are incredible.
8Handel: “Tornami a vagheggiar” (Alcina)
Whenever I sing Alcina, everybody always asks “Are you gonna sing ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ like Sutherland did?” No, Sutherland was allowed to steal it, but nowadays us girls have to leave it to Morgana! But I put that in the playlist because it's nice to have a record that someone once had the power to take that aria and say, this is my showcase and this is what I’m doing with it.
9Donizetti: “O luce di quest’anima” (Linda di Chamounix)
This little aria is hard! I’ve never sung “O luce di quest’anima”. For some reason, it’s just a ship that never sailed into my port. I never learned it. I never studied it. But one day recently, just before you asked me about this playlist, I thought I should learn it, maybe do it as an encore. And I went and listened to Sutherland's recording and realised, God, I just can’t do it. Why does that sound so hard? It seems like everyone sings it. It's a coloratura national anthem. Yet for some reason, I just felt it was totally out of my realm of possibility. It's just one of those things, again, where Sutherland makes something sound easy when it isn’t. That's a Sutherland thing. Other singers, when you listen to them sing, they let you hear the effort. Maybe they’re under-energised or something to the point where it's almost cold. But with Sutherland, it’s never cold. There’s never a sense of detachment. It’s always very much coming from inside.
10Offenbach: “Les oiseaux dans la charmille” (Les Contes d’Hoffmann)
When I was younger, studying at college, I really wanted to be a high coloratura, so I used to try to imitate Sutherland’s Doll Song. I listened to her recording ad nauseam. I had this album that was a compilation of fantastic, fabulous coloratura arias, and this was one of them. I remember thinking, wow, that’s a voice! How is this so good? I just really wanted to sing it, but there it is. There’s the standard. Applaud it and know that it's not for you, and that's okay. You realise your own shortcomings when you hear the great, great artists. So for me, Sutherland was always this next level that was separate from the rest of us mortals.
