Where the white jasmine blends with the rose

Calendula and Osteospermum in the extensive gardens at Dolores Delargo Towers

MID-Summer already? It hardly feels like it has started yet...

What better way to celebrate the longest day of the year [it's all downhill from here, folks!] than with not one, but two magnificent voices - Dame Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne - on (what else but) The Flower Duet? Sigh.

Dame Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne - Flower Duet [Delibes Lakmé]

Under the dense canopy
Where the white jasmine
Blends with the rose
On the flowering bank
Laughing at the morning
Come, let us drift down together
Let us gently glide along
With the enchanting flow
Of the fleeing current
On the rippling surface
With a lazy hand
Let us reach the shore
Where the source sleeps
And the bird sings
Under the dense canopy
Under the white jasmine
Let us drift down together

A joy.

La Stupenda est morte

Dame Joan Sutherland is dead, and we at Dolores Delargo Towers are in mourning.

The leading soprano of the bel canto style for many decades, she worked with all the best orchestras and conductors (not least her husband Richard Bonynge), performed duets with major operatic superstars like Luciano Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne, and was famously directed in an on-screen version of Lucia de Lammamoor by none other than Franco Zefferelli.

We loved our Joan! It was only yesterday after all that I posted her supreme rendition of The Flower Duet. We love her Suor Angelica, her Tosca, her Die Fledermaus, her Norma and her Lucia di Lammermoor. We particularly treasure a vinyl album rarity of Miss Sutherland performing Noel Coward songs with the Master himself!

As down-to-earth as a sheep-shearer from the outback of Oz, Dame Joan was never known for her refinement in real life - she famously said "If I weren't reasonably placid, I don`t think I could cope with this sort of life. To be a diva, you've got to be absolutely like a horse."

But what a singer! She was lauded by her contemporaries - Luciano Pavarotti described her as having "the voice of the century", and Monserrat Caballe once said her voice was "like heaven", and her nickname was "La Stupenda". Joan's was the voice that opened the Sydney Opera House in 1973, and it was from that stage that she announced her retirement in 1990. That alone was a huge loss to music, but in her death there is now a gaping hole in the operatic firmament.

There will certainly never be another Dame Joan Sutherland. RIP...

Joan Sutherland - Vissi d'Arte (Puccini - Tosca)

Joan Sutherland - Casta diva (Bellini - Norma)

And here, Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne sing this sublime duet from Norma [again]:

Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne - Mira, o Norma (Bellini)

Dame Joan Sutherland obituary