​The Italians got it right:
La Stupenda, a fulsome Gloriana
Large, dazzling
With those amazing headpieces
And the enormous armoury of sequined gowns
As though weighting down
The sense of absurdity
She so cannily hid:
A Carmelite in make-believe
Never truly embedded
In the deep carnality
That opera schemes.
 
The voice was refulgent
Rock solid in grupetti
The fleck of gold in every sound:
Without fracture
Startling and smooth
Often hollow.
 
Yet in those dazzling high notes
The good Scottish lass
Knew how to savour Donizetti’s bride:
Then the snap and snarl
Of a Scottish burr
Informed her words with meaning.
 
As the Aussie sporting star
In leaps and bounds
She trilled and thrilled
Above a soft palette:
The great pacifier
Engulfing all
Like those Gothic cathederals
And their stained glass windows.
 
As boring as Melba?
Not quite.
 
Those early recordings
Present a bouquet of exquisite freshness
And real diction:
Success and style
Preserved the voice
Across the decades
With the barest fleck of wear
But narrowed the intensities.
 
In the end
A hobbled thoroughbred
Out of the gowns
Struggling up Utzon’s stairs
And the tiny opera house
She rendered asunder
With the pure force
Of crystalline sound
 
The vast boom as default
Mining forever
Our deep respect
As the lady who sang (and surprised us all)
In hallowed tones
And burnished bronze
A monumental diva
In the shadow of Norma.


Gar Jones - April 2014
​

---