Music: Sutherland: A Separate Greatness

BESIDES Beverly Sills, the other leading heiress to Maria Callas' artistic legacy is the Australian coloratura soprano Joan Sutherland. Sutherland, 45, sings many of the same roles as Sills and, like Sills, was a late bloomer—she burst onto the international scene with a Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden in 1959. Otherwise the two are a study in contrasts: separate conjugations of greatness. Each has her passionate following. Ask a Sutherland admirer about Sills' voice and he might say, "Pretty, but thin." Ask a Sillsian about Sutherland and he might retort, "Beautiful, but boring." Still, all would probably agree with Conductor Thomas Schippers that "we haven't had the luxury of comparing two such singers for 50 years."

Sutherland began by thinking of herself as a dramatic soprano. She feared high notes until her husband, Conductor Richard Bonynge, tricked her into extending her upper voice by playing her music in higher keys. Originally bright and youthful-sounding, her voice darkened as she transformed herself into a coloratura. There is a suggestion of Callas' famous middle register in Sutherland's vocal center—a tone that sounds as if the singer were singing into the neck of a resonant bottle.

Today the Sutherland voice towers like a natural wonder, unique as Niagara or Mount Everest. Sills' voice is made of more ordinary stuff; what she shares with Callas is an abandon in hurling herself into fiery emotional music and a willingness to sacrifice vocal beauty for dramatic effect. Sutherland deals in vocal velvet, Sills in emotional dynamite. Sutherland's voice is much larger, but its plush monochrome robs it of carrying power in dramatic moments. Sills' multicolored voice, though smaller, projects better and has a cutting edge that can slice through the largest orchestra and chorus. Sometimes, indeed, it verges on shrillness.

On the coloratura high wire, both singers emerge as phenomenal. Each has staggering facility in florid runs, trills, leaps and arpeggios. Both have been accused of overdecorating their music, though each plans embellishments so tastefully and executes them so brilliantly that only stringent purists object.

In slow, legato music, Sills has a superior sense of rhythm and clean attack to keep things moving; Sutherland's more flaccid beat and her style of gliding from note to note often turn song into somnolence. Sills' diction in English, French and Italian is superb; Sutherland's vocal placement produces mushy diction in any language, but makes possible an even more seamless beauty of tone than is available to Sills.

Sills is both a born actress and a highly developed one; her keen awareness of what every move looks like from the auditorium enables her to capitalize on even her shortcomings (which include a tall and outsize frame). Swinging her generous hips through an Oriental dance in Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or, she even looks sexy in a Mae West sort of way. Sutherland (with an equally tall and outsize frame) has worked hard to make herself into an acceptable actress, but her stage temperament is essentially a stolid one. Usually she gets her best effects by wearing flowing capes and tunics and standing magisterially still whenever she can.