From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record

From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record is the first-ever comprehensive survey of the recordings of Australia’s greatest singers – in a unique new four-CD set from Decca, complete with biographies of each of the 80 artists, rare photographs, all contained within a 68-page booklet. Co-producer Roger Neill has said: ‘Thirteen years in the making, From Melba to Sutherland is truly a once-in-a-lifetime project – the first-ever comprehensive survey of recordings by Australia’s greatest singers.’

Aside from Melba and Sutherland, other world-famous Australians included are: Peter Dawson, a baritone who concentrated his career on the newly-emerged recording medium, selling some thirteen million records in the fifty years from 1904. Florence Austral, an outstanding Wagnerian soprano. June Bronhill, who followed Joan Sutherland as Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden, but who chose to make her career in operetta and musical comedy with spectacular success. Malcolm McEachern, the bass half of the best-selling Flotsam and Jetsam duo who was equally accomplished in classical repertoire.

Also there are many extremely rare recordings included in the anthology, some of them existing in just a single instance. For example, there is a private recording of the great Australian baritone, Harold Williams, singing a rousing Cobb and Co song, ‘John Bax’. Another great rarity is an unpublished test pressing by Florence Austral singing Brünnhilde’s ‘Battlecry’ from Wagner’s Die Walküre.