The Decca Singers volume devoted to Joan Sutherland has many of the positives and negatives common to others in the series. On the plus side is, as you’d expect, some truly spectacular singing from her prime years. The Lucia aria that opens the disc has the all the dazzling coloratura–perfectly placed and articulated–that we could wish for, and it’s delivered in a voice several sizes bigger than the standard-issue coloratura canary. This track is a ClassicsToday.com “10” rating selection if ever there was one. Trouble is, nothing else on the disc is in the same class. Sure, the Mozart concert aria is almost as spectacularly sung–but it comes with mushy diction and considerable stylistic discomfort. Sutherland sounds like she wandered in from a Donizetti opera. Turning to an accomplished Mozartian like Margaret Price, to take one random example, you hear more body to the voice as well as emotional openness, easeful phrasing, and delicate rubato supremely more fitting to the music. The similarly afflicted Wagner arias miss by even wider margins. Sutherland’s vocal equipment is big enough, but neither she nor Richard Bonynge has the necessary stylistic command of the Wagner idiom, so pacing is awkward, the line not sustained, diction approximate at best, and the arias’ varying emotions sputter fitfully. Still, to hear a singer of Sutherland’s caliber venture into such foreign territory is of interest in itself.
After that, things get pretty hairy with the two Rossini songs that apparently were included to demonstrate that Sutherland doesn’t do humor. The songs are delightful, but they’re sung without the requisite smile in the voice. The rest of the disc shares The Singers’ penchant for loading programs with novelty material, in this instance trifles that might serve as neat encore pieces for lyric soprano recitals–musical theatre pieces that always sound smothered by operatic voices (a trio of Noel Coward show tunes). There’s partial redemption in the last two tracks–gloppy arrangements of “O holy night” and Gounod’s “O divine redeemer”–where the voice soars and Sutherland is more expressive than usual. Pure opera buffs should be warned that less than half the disc is devoted to arias. So this one’s for Sutherland completists, especially since some of the items never have appeared on CD before and others–with good reason–aren’t found on Decca’s typical Sutherland recycling operations. One final flaw shared with all The Singers releases: texts and translations are accessible only via your computer.
