ManicDDaily

Not such a great drawing of the young Joan Sutherland

I felt almost unaccountably sad to hear of the death of Joan Sutherland.  I say, almost unaccountably.

She was a great singer; she was a wonderful mentor for another great singer, Luciano Pavarotti;  her death, in some ways, is like the passing of an age. So much seems to be expected of opera singers today–that they be beautiful, slender, good actors, and physically dextrous–able to sing from prone positions (lying on the stage.)

I admire modern singers.  But I feel a different connection with Miss Sutherland, more personal than simple admiration of her incomparable voice.  As a fairly young child, I was given a record player one Christmas.  I know I was fairly young because it was the Christmas at which it was finally confirmed to me that there was no Santa Claus.  I bugged my mother into confession with endless cross-examination:   “I really do know already.  I mean, how could there be a Santa Claus?  So just tell me, okay, just tell me.”

When my mother finally admitted that I was right, I was crushed.  Of course, I had known the truth (I wasn’t that young), but to have her admit it–to have her not even keep the charade of childhood–felt like an abandonment, as if I were alone in a world that not only did not have magic, but without parents who would allow me to believe in magic.  (Sorry, Mom!  I know you didn’t mean it.)

And then, on Christmas morning, I was given a record player.  It was a blue record player, something between steel and sky.  I also got an album called “A Child’s Introduction to Opera”.    (My parents were very big on “improvement”.)

Of course, we had other LPs in the house, but this was the only one I remember as truly mine.  Joan Sutherland was featured, singing Sempre Libera from La Traviata.

It is a showcase aria (even more than most), filled with trills, lilts, high notes, runs, and I was absolutely captivated.  It seemed almost impossible to me that the human voice could do what Joan Sutherland’s did, could sound the way she did.  It was magic all over again; a deep and wonderful magic that I knew grew from both tremendous discipline and tremendous talent, something between steel and sky.

I listened to her aria down in my basement, lifting up the record arm to play it over and over again. I could not sit still when listening (maybe I was pretty young), but would dance around, leaping up and off the downstairs bed and twirling about the linoleum.

It was not a dank basementy kind of room, but had several casement windows, one several feet off the ground, others just at grass level.  How strange and private and grown-up it seemed to listen to the light and airy (but passionate) in a room which was, at least in part, buried.  Anything seemed possible, anything in this world.

As I’ve become a little more sophisticated in my listening, I’ve come to learn that if Ms. Sutherland had a flaw as a singer, it was her perfection, which some may think makes here singing a bit sterile.  (Perfection, though, seems a rather minor flaw.)

Frankly, her recordings of more emotional arias (from Tosca, for example) move me, at least, to tears.  It’s beautiful music; she’s true to it.