Joan Sutherland sings Lohengrin at 23 RARITY! - Wagner: Elsa's Dream ‣ Einsam in trüben Tagen (1949)

23-years-old (or maybe still 22-years-old, since she was born in Nov. 7th) soprano Joan Sutherland sings the wonderful aria of Elsa in Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin, "Einsam in trüben Tagren" (also known as Elsas Traum, i.e. Elsa's Dream), in an English language translation, at an opera singing contest in her homeland, Australia, in 1949. The aria begins at 0:26 in the video above.
She had made her very early debut in 1946, singing Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and had barely performed in operas (not concerts and recitals) by 1949, a time when most people thought she was destined for the lyric spinto and dramatic repertory, especially that of Wagner.
Interestingly, she would again record Elsa's Dream in her Wagner-only album released exactly 30 years after this very early performance... and she still had 11 more years of singing career after that.

[@10.6.12.]

Wonders never cease with Dàme Joan!

[@Tkimba2]

Thank you !!! 🙏🙏🙏 40+ years of divine singing by Joan

[@baritoneblazzin1965]

Not surprised to hear her singing this at this age there are dramatic type voices already at this age and even a little younger. Thanks for posting!

[@ahogbin2644]

Already a very mature, powerful and fabulous instrument. I can barely believe this is a 23-year old voice! The diction is excellent, which of course became a bit of a contention later on. However, I do believe Bonynge was right to steer her to the bel canto/romantic French repertoire. After all she was still singing amazingly well into her early 60s! many thanks for this rarity. I hope her Aida and Amelia in Ballo might emerge one day.

[@williammaddox3339]

On YT there is a live recording from the 1980's of Sutherland and Pavarotti singing the second act duet from Ballo. I believe it from a concert they did in the US. It is quite good.

[@ahogbin2644]

@@williammaddox3339 Indeed but one of her first successes at Covent Garden in the early 1950s was an Amelia where she was pushed on as third understudy or something with very little preparation. Edward Downes had been trying to get rid of her by this point as she was a slow learn but after this performance became a staunch supporter. Today I cannot imagine Sutherland even having a career because of her size and looks. How the world has changed!!!

[@williammaddox3339]

@@ahogbin2644 I think Sutherland could easily have a career today. She was a vastly more attractive woman in her youth than Angela Meade ( and had a vastly superior voice).

[@ahogbin2644]

@@williammaddox3339 Maybe you are right but she herself said it. Meade's limited success has always been a bit of a puzzle to me - both vocally and physically. Sutherland did have her teeth fixed in the 50s and her jaw "amended" also. The problem today is the telecasts which hone in on the singers and it's expected they look like models and act like classical actors - the voice comes third. It's actually changed the way singers "project" their voices into theatres too. I guess the larger theatres in the USA need a kind of voice which was always rare and which today does not develop. I'm sure that if opera continues at all in the longer term it will be miked in the larger theatres - indeed, I believe it is already enhanced in some theatres - Madrid? The great operatic conductors have more-or-less died out now too: Muti/Bonynge maybe the only remnants of this tradition. Just a few observations.

[@edwardamosbrandwein3583]

Wonderful! Exemplary diction! I wonder what her career would have been like if she had stayed within the Dramatic Soprano repertoire?

[@wotan10950]

This is fascinating since it was before her transformation into a coloratura. Interestingly, her middle voice is very strong here, but lighter on the higher notes. Of course that all changed when she learned to trumpet her high register and highest notes, although her middle voice became a bit wan in the process. Her much later recording of this aria illustrates it - she could obviously sing pretty much anything, but by then, this aria didn’t sit in the glory part of her voice. I was lucky enough to see her onstage in everything she sang in New York after 1975, including recitals in Brooklyn and Buffalo, of all places!

[@ahogbin2644]

Interesting assessment. You heard the great Puritani at the Met and Esclarmonde? I was lucky enough to hear her at Covent Garden from 1980 - the Lucrezia Borgia with Kraus the greatest vocal performance I ever heard. Her 1985 Lucias with Bergonzi were incredible too. Even in 1989 she was pretty amazing at a concert in Newcastle, of all places. I doubt we shall encounter her like again.

[@wotan10950]

@@ahogbin2644 Oh yes, I saw all her performances in New York from the mid-1970s onward. Esclarmonde was a real feast, although it was before the days of subtitles, so I admit that I didn’t quite understand what was going on! Also Lucia, Fille du Regiment, Puritani, Trovatore. I even met them backstage a few times - Bonynge was very talkative and pleasant; Dame Joan was quite a diva!!

[@ahogbin2644]

@@wotan10950 She certainly sang a lot in New York, although you missed out 1978/82 over the "Widow/Seraglio" affair. I saw her Lucrezia, Trovatore, Esclarmonde, Lucia and Anna Bolena plus a few concerts and recitals (a very grand one in Paris). All thrilling and very glamorous occasions. I agree with your assessment of them personally. They were always friendly after performances if a little distant!

[@wotan10950]

@@ahogbin2644 Richard was kind enough to waste at least 15 minutes talking to me! I had purchased his record of Swan Lake for my wife’s birthday, and he signed it and was quite touched by the sentiment. Dame Joan was every inch the diva, and we were a bit tongue-tied. So we mentioned that we’d seen her at a recital in Buffalo on the day before a huge blizzard. She relaxed a bit and said, “Well, I suppose I escaped just in time!”

[@ahogbin2644]

@@wotan10950 Thank you for sharing that. She did have quite a presence. My favourite encounter was after she'd retired at The Barbican concert hall in London 2003. Bonynge was conducting a concert of I Capuletti e i Montecchi. After the interval she walked into the auditorium to a standing ovation. After the performance I approached her for an autograph. She very dramatically refused saying "This is NOT my night". I retorted with "Well, brava anyway Dame Joan. Quite a lot of the public were rather startled as she'd always cultivated this image of being so friendly and nice. Quite a funny evening!

[@christopherrobinwattsthoma6318]

❤

[@ZenGrammy]

A treasure, indeed. Thank you. 🌹

[@jmiller05]

I actually find this fascinating. Her middle voice is rock solid here. I actually think Bonynge did a lot of harm to her middle voice with his unceasing mania for Sutherland to preserve her high notes at all costs. As a result, he stretched the voice up and left a big void in the middle.

[@sirdicaudore]

🙄🙄🙄

[@sirdicaudore]

🙄

[@kbhprinsesse]

Thank you so much for uploading this!!!!!! I would like to point out, however, that her 1946 debut was in Bach's Christmas Oratorio. It was in 1947 that she sang concert performances, first of Händel's "Acis and Galatea", then of Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas". During her time in Australia before going to London, she would later sing Mendelssohn's "Elijah" (1949 & 1950), both Dalila and the Israelitre Woman in Händel's "Samson" (1950), Händel's "Messiah" (1950), and Goossen's "Judith" (1951).

[@williammaddox3339]

I don't think Sutherland was capable of singing the Israelite Woman in 1950; the tessitura was way too high for her voice at that time, not to mention of the high D.

[@kbhprinsesse]

@@williammaddox3339 Nonetheless she did sing it. Besides, the high D isn't in the score, it was added as an ornament. Maybe she didn't sing it in 1950.

[@williammaddox3339]

@@kbhprinsesse She sang Delilah.

[@kbhprinsesse]

@@williammaddox3339 She sang both roles according to both her autobiography and Norma Major's book about her. I think I trust Dame Joan more to know what she sang than some wannabe-know-it-all on KZbin.

[@williammaddox3339]

@@kbhprinsesse If it is in both books, you must have sung it. I may check it out. By listening to her recordings, the tessitura would have been way too high for voice and it could not have been pretty.

[@herrbrucvald6376]

She's 23 here?? omfg. Did she even dream of the splendours to come in 10 yrs? I have always wished that she had sung this opera on record and onstage... ...and together with Nilsson as Ortrud! Yes---Nilsson should have done Ortrud, not Elsa.

[@edwardamosbrandwein3583]

Nilsson started studying Ortrud but gave it up because she found the role too low for her voice (her own words)

[@edwardamosbrandwein3583]

She was 22 since this was before her birthday (Nov7)

[@kbhprinsesse]

I think she should have sung it with Callas as Ortrud ;)

[@philipc67]

@@kbhprinsesse Callas would never sing seconda donna. Think Les Huguenots. Plus neither was fluent in German.

[@kbhprinsesse]

@@philipc67 Both sang Wagnerian roles in Italian during their careers in Italy. I know Callas wouldn't sing seconda donna, but I think she would have been absolutely magnificent as Ortrud.

[@dianaaljadeff2983]

I think that she more expressive in this repertoire as a lyric soprano more than she was in her Golden years with Bonynge in the sixties when she became a perfect coloratura machine and we didnt understand what she sang.

[@mariojimenez762]

For me she was a liric with big sound yes but liric soprano.

[@Homoclassicus]

@@mariojimenez762 She herself and her husband Bonynge claimed her voice was fundamentally lyric-spinto, she just had developed an excetionally good coloratura technique and had an unusual ease at the top of her range.

[@lionessqueenprotector]

@@Homoclassicus there was absolutely nothing even remotely lyrical about Sutherland's voice, except perhaps the lyrical quality of her timbre, but other than that she was a dramatic soprano in every way possible. I've heard her live in the Lyric Opera House in Chicago, and her was voice was absolutely gigantic but soft-edged, bigger than all the female voices that I have heard in that house (including a couple of really famous dramatic/Wagnerian sopranos). Probably the most incredible acoustic experience of my life, a voice so spacious and oceanic, when she sang a pp, it sound as if she was singing in my ear directly, and when she blasted a ff, you could feel and hear the reverberation of that voice physically for a couple of seconds even after she closed her mouth.

[@beachfanatic2010]

@@lionessqueenprotector She was a lyric soprano. To me she wasn’t even a lirico Spinto. Wasn’t Tebaldi a lirico Spinto? Well, Tebaldi’s voice was much much heavier and thicker than Sutherland. Tebaldi had a bronze quality in her voice that was incredible. Sutherland is a soubrette compare to Tebaldi. I also know for a fact that lyric soprano such as Clara Petrella and Freni possessed bigger heavier sounds than Sutherland as well. I mean her voice was large but that did not make her a dramatic soprano. The voice is girlish, soft and feminine but never metallic. Dramatic sopranos such as Callas and Nilsson OBTAIN A METALLIC SOUND EVEN IN THEIR MIDDLE VOICES and this is typical dramatic. All singers can sound metallic in their top notes but extremely and very few will sound equally metallic in their middle voices. This is Nilsson past her prime and we can get a sense of how big the voice really was: m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/foLTnml3abh5lbM. Volume output that Sutherland never had in her best day.

[@ahogbin2644]

@@Homoclassicus Indeed. Bonynge did say that Sutherland's voice was very flexible by nature and she always had that amazing trill - she claimed she never had to learn how to do it!

[@josephhapp9]

🙏🙏🙏🌺🌺🌺

[@onigbajamo]

This was probably the same competition she sang Dich teure Halle and Ritorna vincitor (both in English). I believe she won.

[@barbaranorthwood]

She did and the prize money enabled her to come to London.

[@nathandavis3002]

Where did you find this ?!

[@johnboy8576]

Can you upload Sutherland's Aida and Dido?

[@williammaddox3339]

I suspect they don't exist. I can't imagine if Aida existed, we would have heard it by now.

[@edwardamosbrandwein3583]

@@williammaddox3339 And BALLO IN MASCHERA?

[@williammaddox3339]

@@edwardamosbrandwein3583 Not until the end of 1952 during a tour with Covent Garden.

[@edwardamosbrandwein3583]

@@williammaddox3339 Thx

[@terrycloth6380]

Wow. Real diction

[@ransomcoates546]

This is traditionally not young to be launching a career. Nowadays we keep students in conservatories until their 30’s, where they become worse and worse singers. (You can see why it was thought that S. was a Wagnerian. There are notes that sound uncannily like Flagstad.)

[@draganvidic2039]

I find this rather mediocre actually. Her early coloratura singing is good but nothing after 1970.

[@joshuamcpherson007]

Mediocre? She was a student singer who had only recently discovered she was a soprano, and not a mezzo. What'd you think? You were going to hear a polished, professional performance? LOL.