20th Century

Strangely enough I associate Dame Joan Sutherland with failed attempts to use a Coke machine.

My grandfather studied and sang with Dame Joan at the Sydney Conservatorium and later on briefly at the Sydney Opera House. One story he used to tell about Dame Joan was finding her in a corridor frustrated and confused by a new fangled invention from the seventies that would allow you to purchase drinks via a machine. Nonno (as we call him) had recently familiarised himself with the functioning of the drink machine and instructed her upon its complex operation. The thought of two practitioners of this high Baroque art, puzzling over a coke machine – one very large soprano and one short Italian tenor – was always an amusing image.

But upon hearing about her death this morning Nonno also said another thing that he would often repeat about Dame Joan: “She was a really lovely person. Really humble, just like everybody else, never acted like she was a big star.” This is something that has been repeated in numerous obituaries about the great Australian singer, and leads me to think whether she is the greatest Australian of the last century?

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