The first set comprises Sutherland’s complete Recitals and Oratorio recordings for Decca, ranging from the 1959 operatic recital recorded in Paris, with Nello Santi (has Verdi’s “Santo di patria” ever rung out with greater thrill?), the truly legendary “Art of the Prima Donna” (an early example of a ‘concept’ record), through to the famous ‘Live from Lincoln Center’ (with longtime collaborators Marilyn Horne and Luciano Pavarotti). It all includes some of her earliest recordings, four of which, recorded in 1958 with Richard Bonynge at the piano are being published on Decca for the first time, and a set of French songs which were discovered some years ago at the end of the tapes for the French Opera Arias set. Sutherland was also invited to participate in recordings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by Ernest Ansermet and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, and these are included, as are two versions of Handel’s Messiah (Boult, Bonynge) and the Solti recording of Verdi’s Requiem. Relative rarities come in the form of an all-Wagner disc (a composer many thought Sutherland was born to sing), bonused with her appearance as the Woodbird in the Solti Ring; Bliss’s A Song of Welcome (from 1954 – her very first studio recording); and Bach’s Cantata ‘Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben’ (Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring). For her final Decca recital recording, Sutherland teamed up with fellow Australian, hornist Barry Tuckwell, for a disc of Romantic Trios, with her husband Richard Bonynge at the piano.
