by Sue Corbett
Her spell as the only Progressive MP came to an end in 1974 when the party won five more seats. Indeed, as the United Party continued to lose ground at the polls, the Progressive Party gradually became the official Opposition, and Suzman’s onslaughts on apartheid policies gained welcome reinforcement from a new breed of vigorous parliamentarians.
From the outset Suzman had taken a special interest in conditions in South African prisons. She visited Nelson Mandela on Robben Island in the early 1960s, continuing to do so in later years. She was one of the first MPs to visit the squatter camps such as Crossroads and bring them to the attention of Parliament. In latter years she paid particular attention to what she believed were deteriorating standards in the South African judicial system and, in particular, the recurring cases in which whites who beat blacks to death in the most brutal fashion were given scandalously light sentences.
In 1989 she introduced the first censure motion ever before Parliament on a judge, J. J. Strydom, who had given a five-year suspended jail sentence, and a fine equivalent to a few hundred pounds, to a farmer, Jacobus Vorster, who had beaten a black labourer to death. Vorster was also to pay a small stipend to the widow and five children of the deceased for the next five years.
Describing the entire judgment as “a travesty of justice”, Suzman found herself subjected to a barrage of sarcastic remarks from the Minister of Justice, who also saw fit to make the extraordinary observation that in addition to his punishment the convicted man would face humiliation because he would be known by fellow whites to be working for the next five years to support a black woman. It goes without saying that in an atmosphere of such moral inversions, Suzman’s censure motion was thrown out.
Yet, South Africa was on the verge of change. P. W. Botha had given up the leadership of his party in February 1989 after suffering a stroke, though still retaining the State Presidency (the office of Prime Minister had been abolished in 1983). His successor, the Education Minster, F. W. de Klerk, though not previously noted as an advocate of reform, was soon to be calling for a non-racist South Africa and for full-scale, open, negotiations about the country’s future.
Helen Suzman at a Christmas party for South African pensioners in 1979
But 1989 was also the year in which Suzman decided to retire from politics. She had reached the age of 70 and felt that much of what she had striven for was about to be achieved. In October that year she came to London and was appointed an honorary DBE. She also received prizes and honorary degrees from institutions and universities all over the world.
Back in South Africa she then watched from the political sidelines the heady events leading to the release of Mandela and the transition to majority rule, with a mixture of apprehension and hope.
Her autobiography, In No Uncertain Terms, was published in 1993. She was appointed to the Order of Merit of South Africa in 1997.
The Helen Suzman Foundation, an independent think-tank dedicated to the promotion of liberal values in post-apartheid South Africa, was founded in her honour, and Suzman acted as patron.
Helen Suzman’s husband, Dr M. M. Suzman, died in 1994. She is survived by their two daughters.
Helen Suzman, South African parliamentarian and civil rights campaigner, was born on November 7, 1917. She died on January 1, 2009, aged 91
DAME JOAN SUTHERLAND
* * *
AUSTRALIAN SOPRANO WHOSE DRAMATIC COLORATURA VOICE BECAME THE TOAST OF THE WORLD
OCTOBER 12, 2010
On a raw mid-February night in 1959 one of the most remarkable performances in the postwar history of opera took place in London — a night that transformed the career of Joan Sutherland, a 32-year-old soprano from Sydney. The occasion was the premiere of Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden. The opera had not been heard there since 1925, although in recent years Maria Callas had been restoring the reputation of Donizetti and bel canto in general.
The production was mounted especially for Sutherland, who had previously performed a wide repertoire as a company member for six and a half years. The soprano’s skill in the florid style had been carefully brought out by the coaching of her husband, Richard Bonynge. Zeffirelli had also worked meticulously to help her to build a convincing physical characterisation (in the unforgettable Mad Scene, he had her darting frantically from one guest to another, which she accomplished while continuing to maintain perfect vocal control).
The performance launched Sutherland’s reign as the world’s leading Lucia over the next quarter-century, and helped to establish her as one of the greatest of all bel canto interpreters. The Lucia was immensely gratifying not only for Sutherland herself, but also for those who had believed in her — above all her husband; her mother, whose voice had been Sutherland’s initial inspiration; her teacher, Clive Carey; her dramatic coach, Norman Ayrton; Covent Garden’s backstage personnel, who had constantly encouraged her; and Sir David Webster, the house’s general administrator at the time. Webster had watched Sutherland gain confidence on stage over the years, and had known full well that he would need to find a suitable vehicle for her. Lucia was the fulfilment of his astute judgment of Sutherland’s talent and his faith in it.
Over a quarter of a century later, in 1985, the Covent Garden audience heard Sutherland’s Lucia again. The Zeffirelli production by that time was looking its age, but Dame Joan, as she had now become, was in tremendous form, as was the tenor Carlo Bergonzi, who sang Edgardo. These two veterans gave the public an unforgettable performance, which at the same time provided a priceless lesson for artists of the next generation.
The 1985 Lucia should have come as no surprise to anyone who had followed Sutherland’s career over the years. She had been unfailingly vigilant in preserving her voice; as a result, her command of trills and florid passages proved as dazzling as ever. Beyond that, she exhibited the sheer authority that comes only from long experience in applying superb technique to formidable stylistic demands. “Without technique we cannot take a single artistic step forward,” she once said, and her career demonstrated the supreme wisdom of that assertion.
Joan Sutherland was born in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1926. Even as a child she absorbed a great deal from the singing of her mother, who possessed a remarkable mezzo-soprano voice. The budding singer studied at the conservatory in Sydney and in her early twenties was performing everything from Acis and Galatea and Dido and Aeneas to excerpts from the operas of Wagner. One of her early successes was the title role of Sir Eugene Goossens’s Judith (1951). The composer believed that here was the true successor to Sutherland’s compatriot of the 1920s, the great Wagner soprano Florence Austral. Shortly thereafter Sutherland won the Sun Aria competition, and Australian sponsorship money made possible her trip to Britain for the continuation of her studies.
Sutherland arrived in London in August 1951. She attended the Royal College of Music where another Australian, Richard Bonynge, who had studied piano at the Sydney Conservatory, was already installed.
After four auditions, Sutherland made her debut at Covent Garden as the First Lady in The Magic Flute. During her first two seasons she sang supporting and leading parts — Clotilde in Norma (for Callas’s debut, 1952), the Priestess in Aida, Frasquita in Carmen, but also Lady Rich in Gloriana, Agathe in Der Freischütz and, on tour, the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro and Amelia in Un ballo in maschera.
Bonynge introduced his fellow Australian not only to musical London but also to the bel canto repertoire, which was to remain their joint passion throughout their professional lives. Hearing Callas helped Bonynge to prove to Sutherland that a large-scale soprano voice, with sufficient technique, could easily manage the demands of bel canto singing.
Bonynge, whose original intention had been to become a concert pianist, increasingly chose to spend his time coaching and guiding Sutherland — not necessarily in a direction that pleased Covent Garden, where bel canto repertoire was not one of the management’s major interests. Sutherland a
nd Bonynge were married in 1954.
Shortly after the wedding Bonynge gave a Wigmore Hall recital, but during the next several years he was generally heard only with Sutherland, either as accompanist or conductor. By the mid-1960s he was leading nearly all of Sutherland’s performances, both on stage and in the studio (major exceptions were recordings of Turandot under Mehta and the Verdi Requiem under Solti).
Eventually, however, Bonynge branched out to make his own superb contribution internationally as both a conductor and scholar, restoring innumerable neglected scores to public attention.
The five years prior to Lucia found Sutherland acquiring a vast amount of stage and concert experience. At Covent Garden she sang brilliantly as Jenifer in Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage (world premiere, 1955) and also shone in such leading roles as Gilda, Eva in Die Meistersinger, and Mme Lidoine in Dialogues of the Carmelites (British premiere, 1958).
In other venues she took on operas not associated with her later on (La clemenza di Tito, Euryanthe and Aida). She also revealed her flair for Handel: as Alcina with the Handel Opera Society, then later at the Garden where, as the Israelite Woman in Samson, she stopped the show with Let the Bright Seraphim. Once Lucia brought Sutherland to the front rank she was able to choose what she wished to sing, both in London and in major theatres abroad.
The offers came swiftly, including I Puritani at Glyndebourne, Beatrice di Tenda at La Scala, and, in 1960, Alcina for her American debut in Dallas (following the premiere of Zeffirelli’s production in Venice). Sutherland toured America the following year, ending at the Metropolitan Opera, where she made her debut as Lucia. She returned to La Scala to star opposite Giulietta Simionato in Rossini’s Semiramide, one of many neglected works she helped to return to the repertoire (others over the years would include Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, Verdi’s I Masnadieri, and two operas of Massenet, Esclarmonde and Le roi de Lahore).
The soprano’s recording career was launched in 1959 with a magnificent Bellini/Donizetti/Verdi recital for Decca. Her voice was revealed as that rarity, a dramatic coloratura soprano; the combination of gleaming tone, huge range, and infallible command of florid passages, in an instrument of Wagnerian amplitude, seemed unparalleled in modern times. Sutherland also recorded Donna Anna in Columbia’s Don Giovanni under Giulini and then, in 1960, a two-disc recital entitled The Art of the Prima Donna. That set rightly positioned Sutherland as the successor to the greatest sopranos, from Mrs Billington and Giuditta Pasta to Melba and Tetrazzini.
Sutherland’s New York debut with the American Opera Society in a concert performance of Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda (1961) brought her together for the first time with the American mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne. Vocally, musically, and personally, their rapport was complete, as witnessed in Semiramide (Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, concert performance in London) and Norma (their role debuts in Vancouver were followed by new productions at Covent Garden, the Met, and San Francisco).
In 1965 Sutherland first encountered another frequent partner, Luciano Pavarotti: first for the tenor’s American debut in Miami, then for Sutherland’s return to Australia with an ensemble created for the occasion, the Sutherland-Williamson International Opera Company. In 1966 she and Pavarotti recorded Beatrice di Tenda for Decca (many more complete operas would follow), and they later sang together in new Met productions of Il Trovatore, I Puritani, and La Fille du Régiment. This last work reprised a staging in which the two had triumphed at Covent Garden, with Sutherland — to general amazement — revealing the instincts of a born comedienne. The first half of her career included few comic roles, but she would make up for it later, enjoying herself tremendously as leading lady of Die Fledermaus and The Merry Widow.
The Bonynges had a villa in Switzerland as their home base, but for three decades they travelled the world, with appearances in every major concert hall and opera house. Their recitals were enchantingly old-fashioned events, with Sutherland often singing French and English material that would have graced programmes of the Victorian era. (She generally sang from a music stand, blaming this on what she described as “my rotten memory”.) Her concerts with orchestra were invariably memorable occasions, in which she would frequently delight audiences with arias from operas she had little or no chance to sing on stage.
Audiences who heard Sutherland during her three decades as an international star will long remember portrayals as varied as Cleopatra (Hamburg); Rodelinda (Amsterdam); Marguerite de Valois (La Scala, also in concert at the Royal Albert Hall); Anna Bolena (Toronto, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, and in a telecast from New York’s Lincoln Centre); Ophélie (Toronto); Esclarmonde (San Francisco, the Met, Covent Garden); Adriana Lecouvreur (San Diego); and an extraordinary variety of roles — among them Alcina, Idomeneo’s Elettra, Desdemona, Lakmé, Suor Angelica and Mme Lidoine — in Sydney.
Over the years Sutherland was able to exploit her statuesque presence to increasingly effective dramatic purposes. She always responded to stage direction as long as it was honest and remained faithful to the work.
Other than Lucia, her finest achievement as an actress was perhaps the four Hoffmann heroines, the greatest possible challenge to her versatility. She sang Olympia, Giulietta and Antonia individually in her early years at Covent Garden (Olympia helped to awaken management to her possibilities in coloratura roles). Not until 1970 did she add Stella to the other three, singing them all for the director Bliss Hebert’s Seattle production. She reprised Hoffmann at the Met (in New York and on tour), in Sydney, and for a justly praised Decca recording under Bonynge, with Plácido Domingo as her partner.
Sutherland husbanded her resources in the final decade of her career, choosing less strenuous roles and eliminating others from her active repertoire. In October 1990 the Australian Opera presented the soprano’s final complete role on stage, Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots.
On New Year’s Eve that year, Sutherland made her last stage appearance as the special event of a gala Fledermaus at Covent Garden. As guest of honour in the second-act party scene, with her husband conducting, she sang from La Traviata with Pavarotti and from Semiramide with Horne (for The Times her appearance served as “a fitting reminder of the reason she has dominated the bel canto repertoire for three decades: nobody ever produced coloratura singing of more purity or accuracy”). Her single, utterly appropriate solo contribution was Sir Henry Bishop’s ballad Home Sweet Home, sung with immense affection.
On disc one can hear all of Sutherland’s greatest stage roles, as well as several she sang only in the recording studio, among them Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore, Elvira in Ernani, Turandot (an enthralling portrayal, this), and Ah-Joe in Franco Leoni’s L’Oracolo. One can also hear a wide variety of songs and arias — not just the expected Rossini and Donizetti, but also off-the-beaten-track French repertoire, operetta, and songs by the Bonynges’ devoted friend Noël Coward. On video several concerts are exceptionally rewarding, as are Lucia (Met), Norma (Toronto), Lucrezia Borgia (Covent Garden), and numerous portrayals taped in Sydney. Sutherland was also captivating as host and leading performer in a television series for youngsters, Who’s Afraid of Opera?, originally shown on American television.
Sutherland was appointed CBE in 1961, AC (Companion of the Order of Australia) in 1975, DBE in 1978, and to the Order of Merit in 1991. She was patron of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
The soprano was beloved by fans and friends not simply for her artistry but for her charm, humour and feet-on-the-ground attitude to life. Her autobiography, A Prima Donna’s Progress, appeared in 1997.
She is survived by her husband and their son.
Dame Joan Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE, operatic soprano, was born on November 7, 1926. She died on October 11, 2010, aged 83
DAME ELIZABETH TAYLOR
* * *
INTUITIVE AND ALLURING SCREEN ACTRESS WHO PROVED FASCINATING TO THE CAMERA AND THE PUBLIC LONG AFTER HER FILM CAREER HAD GONE INTO DECLINE
MARCH 24, 2011
Married eight times to seven different husbands, she conducted her affairs like a Beverly Hills Wife of Bath. Plagued by accidents as she was, she was also blessed with apparent indestructibility. She bounced back after divorce, bereavement, alcohol and drug addiction, career droughts and the venom of the world’s press.
In her youth she was often described as the brunette counterpart to Marilyn Monroe. But there was nothing remotely vulnerable about Taylor. She proved to be tougher than any of her husbands, and she claimed, after a lifetime’s hard work, the right to enjoy her money and celebrity.
Her greatest gift as an actress was her face. She was incomparably photogenic, with jet-black hair, so dark it seemed almost blue on screen, and eyes the deep purple colour of an aubergine skin. Her figure presented more problems for cameramen. Small, curvaceous and top-heavy, she had the bust of a much taller woman. Beauty aside, she could strike those who met her, particularly when she was sober, as rather ordinary, happiest talking about her children and dogs. It was that streak of normality which saved her.
Her acting talents were peculiarly limited to the big screen. Both Paul Newman and Richard Burton, when they first rehearsed with her, complained to their directors that Taylor was wooden and gave them nothing to act against. Both had to agree, when they saw what the camera had picked up — her instinctive, understated gestures, the flicker of her eyes — that she knew what she was doing. Even so, there were some critics who made a living out of lambasting Taylor, those who could never look past the awfulness of some of her early work, or who could not admit that such a pretty girl could act.
