This is not how we planned this edition to be. As trumpeted last issue, we were planning a cover to celebrate the career of the superb bass-baritone Gerald Finley. Indeed, we got some way beyond the planning stage. The Finley cover had actually started being printed when we heard the sad news that Dame Joan Sutherland had passed away.

There was never any question of what we had to do. Few singers have had such an impact on the global cultural consciousness as the soprano they dubbed “La Stupenda”. So, with apologies to Mr Finley – and you can still read our big interview with him in this issue – the presses were duly stopped and a new cover designed. We are grateful to the artists who at such short notice contributed to our tribute, among them Sutherland’s frequent colleague and friend Marilyn Horne (who probably sang with Dame Joan more than anyone else alive) as well as Zubin Mehta, the conductor who steered one of her biggest gambles, when she recorded the killer title-role in Puccini’s Turandot. By rights, that shouldn’t have worked. Other lyric sopranos have braved that part and emerged with their voices in shreds. But, as ever, Sutherland and her husband Richard Bonynge knew what they were doing. One thing that emerges from our various tributes is the sheer size of her voice. Lyrical it may have been but, as Mehta quipped over the phone to me, “she wasn’t a little soubrette!”

Thanks, above all, to two of our great writers, John Steane and Edward Greenfield, who worked fast and hard to do justice to the soprano they so admired. JBS gives the critic’s view in his inimitable prose while EG, who knew Sutherland well, offers a more intimate memoir. We also recommend some of her greatest recordings, which I’m sure we will all be playing a great deal as we mourn music’s loss.

You can also enjoy some musical excerpts featuring Dame Joan on the Gramophone Player, as well as filmed highlights from our recent Awards (and much more). It’s live now on our website, www.gramophone.co.uk.

james.inverne@haymarket.com