This August, 1976 live performance from Sydney is of course only for Sutherland fans. (It has been available on video for some time but I’m uncertain as to whether or not it is the first time the audio-only is available.) This is not to say that it isn’t otherwise a nice performance: Lauris Elms is a convincing Azucena who scrupulously sings the notes; Kenneth Collins is a semi-heroic tenor with a respectable high-C and good style as Manrico; and Jonathan Summers, though a bit dry-toned, is a nicely malevolent di Luna. Richard Bonynge’s conducting is without profile–he always tended to sit and listen to Dame Joan sing, and this wasn’t really his repertoire–but it’s musical and has some fine dramatic moments.
Big Joan, in a role not particularly suited to her–she had only begun to perform it the year before–does indeed sing the heck out of it, and the voice is still in spectacular shape (she had been singing professionally for more than 25 years when this was recorded). It’s all here: the exquisite trills, still unsurpassed, the fluent, fluid coloratura (she embellishes her fourth-act cabaletta to within an inch of its life, probably to keep the tessitura high enough to be effective, which it is), and the sheer geyser of sound. But also present are the problems: Diction, though much improved from the 1960s, is still mushy, and while she sings dramatically, even indulging in some chest voice, this is not the sound or the attitude or the outlook one associates with Verdi’s Leonora. It is, in fact, “other”. And it’s Sutherland. It’s marginally more theatrically involving than her commercial recording, made around the same time, but that one has Pavarotti and Horne to keep us happy. You’ll know if you need this.
