Joan Sutherland: The Authorized Biography

by Norma Major

Book Overview

An authorized biography of the opera legend includes details about her childhood in Australia, her struggle to achieve success, and her brilliant career as a great soprano, and offers a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316545554
• ISBN13: 9780316545556
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 324 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Good but flawed.

As opera buffs well know, Joan Sutherland was the greatest coloratura soprano of the second half of the twentieth century. This book, by the wife of recent British Prime Minister John Major, is a decent, competent, workmanlike biography, but not a truly excellent or outstanding one. Major has done most of her homework well, and there is much about the book that is attractive. It is readable and is about the right length (the biography itself is 248 pages long). The book includes a comprehensive catalog of Sutherland's performances (40 pages, with cast lists, conductors, locations and dates of performances, from her earliest public appearance in Sydney in 1946 to her farewell gala at Covent Garden on 31 Dec. 1990), usefully chronicling an exceptionally long, rich, and varied international career. It also includes a discography (14 pages) and a role listing, giving each role she sang, when she first sang it, and how many times she sang it. There are two sections of photographs, well chosen but fuzzily reproduced in the edition I have (the American Little, Brown edition of 1994). Major makes a reasonable effort through most of the book to be fair and even-handed, not falling into the trap of being excessively partisan and uncritically laudatory (the gushing "fan" biography) but showing obvious sympathy for her subject. If anything, however, the balance is too strongly tilted to the sympathetic side, too eager to justify whatever Dame Joan did or didn't do, and in particular too eager to say kind things about her final performing years (when her voice was in decline), editing out negative review comments and quoting the favorable ones. (Like most prima donnas she sang too long and didn't retire until she was well over the hill at 64.) Sutherland's shortcomings as a singer (despite her excellence, she did have some) get minimal treatment, and one of them, the increasingly hooded, covered, hooty, or throaty quality of her midrange after the mid-1970s, is never mentioned at all. The writing is for the most part utilitarian but undistinguished. There are too many small evidences of failure to edit/proofread carefully--carelessness for which the publisher is primarily to blame. The book has an index, although its usefulness is reduced because it indexes only proper names, the names of operas, and opera roles. In addition, it is arbitrary and unreliable (for example, the book does much quoting of reviews by critics, some of whom are indexed, while others are not). But the most substantial fault of the book, in my view, is the failure of the text of the biography to deal at all with a major component of Sutherland's life work: her very important and extensive recording career. This is a grave shortcoming, not to be glossed over, and for some it may be decisive. Given the book's subject, I find it inexplicable and inexcusable. One example: the recording that announced to the world the arrival of a major new singer, Sutherland's groundbrea

A good companion to Sutherland's autobiography

After having read Sutherland's autobiography some time ago, I wasn't sure whether or not it was worth it to read Norma Major's book. Thankfully, there are enough anecdotes to set it apart from Sutherland's own account of her stratospheric career. Norma Major depicts, at the beginning, an awkward, ungainly Sutherland, in a manner that is almost embarrassing, but brutally honest. She also draws more parallels between Sutherland's career and that of Maria Callas. Sutherland only touched on the subject in her own book when she recalled being angry at a conductor who inferred that Callas was more disciplined at rehersal than she was (to which Sutherland retorted, "and look what happened to her!"). Major dwells on the topic a little more, giving her reader the idea of the karma that both of these great sopranos created for themselves.Norma Major also, towards the end of the book, painstakingly recounts the tensions between Richard and Joan, and the Australian Opera. Although it's been some time since I've read Prima Donna's Progress, it seems that Joan Sutherland glossed over this subject.In short, Sutherland's legendary rise to fame and operatic glory is certainly worthy of at least two accounts. Futhermore, as Sutherland was not a great "interpreter" of her roles, she also was not that great at analyzing her own career. Major goes beyond a simple listing of the many Normas and Lucias sung.

a good biography by a real fan

Norma Major is evidently a great fan of La Stupenda and it shows in the painstaking care she took,writing and researching this book.I found this to be a fascinating read, informative and yet entertaining . I really enjoyed it and the illustrations were lovely. A job well done.