Moffatt Oxenbould remembers Joan Sutherland
In 1965, three years after graduating from the NIDA Production Course, I was fortunate to be a Stage Manager of the Sutherland-Williamson Opera Company, performing in four Australian cities. Sutherland sang 43 performances of five different roles. The assembled company had high expectations of our star, but these were all exceeded when we began to work together. She was a disciplined professional who led the company by example. Her singing was beyond magnificent and we all loved her because she clearly loved us, as a “family” of colleagues embarking together on what was going to be a landmark adventure in our country’s operatic history.
Following that amazing season, I worked with Sadler’s Wells Opera in London and occasionally crossed paths with Joan and Richard Bonynge – I especially remember a recording session of Beatrice di Tenda, sitting with Joan as she did her needlepoint, before getting up to record the then unfamiliar melodies of Bellini for posterity.
Our friendship deepened when Joan and Richard came back to Sydney in 1974 for Les Contes d’Hoffmann with what was then The Australian Opera. Subsequently Richard Bonynge became our Musical Director and I worked closely with him as Artistic Administrator. Joan sang many of the great roles in her repertoire until her farewell to the operatic stage in 1990. I had the privilege of directing Joan in Semiramide and also in her only stage appearances as Puccini’s Suor Angelica, in which she enjoyed a significant success alongside her many friends and colleagues from the female ensemble of our Company – to which she was so proud and happy to lead and belong.
Dame Joan and I were colleagues who became close friends. In 1989 I curated an exhibition documenting her career for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which was subsequently was seen in other Australian cities. I well remember days in Les Avants with her, going through drawers and boxes of letters and photographs – and especially a dusty morning in Chalet Amina, dragging out costumes that she had worn at important moments in her career – the Zeffirelli mad scene costume from Lucia di Lammermoor, the ruby velvet gown from Traviata and several more.
I will never forget the extraordinary night in Melbourne in 1965 following a dazzling final performance of La Sonnambula, after which the audience clamoured for her to sing Home Sweet Home – accompanied by Richard on an old piano, used for onstage ballet classes. The first performances in the Sydney Opera House in 1974 – and the Huguenots farewell in 1990. So many wonderful recollections!
Those of us privileged to have known and worked with Joan will never forget her artistry and humanity. Fortunately, we share with the world, amazing recordings of her singing and performances. While writing, I stopped for a moment to play one of her earliest recordings – The Art of the Prima Donna – recorded in London in 1960. While it is many years since I first heard this phenomenal recorded document, it makes me feel incredibly blessed to have actually been a colleague, a friend and a devoted admirer of this truly gracious lady.
Moffatt Oxenbould AM, 2026.
