August 9 came and went without the compulsion to make an outlandish investment in opera tickets. The date individual tickets for the 2021-22 season of the Metropolitan Opera went on sale had long been circled on my calendar. I’d hoped to wheel a trip to New York City around Lise Davidsen’s appearance as Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. It’s not a great role, nor is it my favorite Wagner opera, but Davidsen was my lodestar during my quarantine-era immersion in opera.
A bit of good news temporarily prevents me from making definitive plans in 2022. Instead of pouting about the likelihood of missing Davidsen, I’ve taken consolation in the work of one of her most famous antecedents. Since making the boxed set my default soundtrack in recent weeks, all but three or four of the twenty hours of Joan Sutherland’s Complete Decca Studio Recitals have enlivened and uplifted me.
After coming to my attention through a handful of vintage operas I streamed last year, Sutherland came to mind as I read Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark. Thea Kronberg, the heroine of Cather’s novel, is an unlikely opera star. Sutherland’s ascent was similarly implausible.
Dissociated from the stage, the Australian’s renderings of arias are entirely ingratiating in spite of her staggering vocal athleticism. The extensive documentation of Sutherland’s welcoming approach nullifies opera’s unfortunate reputation as a difficult discipline meant to be appreciated only by ostentatious aesthetes and prosperous patrons of so-called high culture.