I only got to hear Dame Joan twice. Once in her next to last "Norma" in Detroit and then at the Dallas "Widow." I was so overtaken by "Norma" that my memory of it is a blur. "The Merry Widow" was the most fun I ever had in the theater.
Marc --
I envy your having heard Sutherland's Norma; she may have been the greatest ever in that role.
Do you remember that the Rolling Stones were doing a concert in the Cotton Bowl the same night as Sutherland's farewell Merry Widow? If you stepped outside the Music Hall during intermission you could hear "Wild Horses" and "Gimme Shelter" and "Time Is On My Side" drifting across the Texas State Fairgrounds. At the end of the Merry Widow, the Dallas Opera's general director began a little speech about how he wanted to honor "a great artist who has traveled to America to share with us the gift of music." Sutherland interrupted: "Do you mean Mick Jagger?" The audience went wild.
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