I just got the book Chalet Monet from the library and it's breathtaking. If there is any continued interest I will post more pictures. It's a breathtaking book.The panorama of Lake Geneva is their view!
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Seattleoperafan
Prominent people have long been buried with their valuables. The Bonynges would have had to buy an entire cemetery.
Much of this stuff is very valuable historical memorabilia about bel canto artists and I believe he is planning on creating a historic prima donna museum after his passing. The Bonynges have been instrumental in calling attention to the great prima donnas of the past, especially with Sutherland's Art of The Prima Donna, one of the most important operatic recital albums of the recorded age. I have long been fascinated with collectors as I was a mini collector as a child. I knew some fabulously wealthy queens here who had thousands of Baroque porcelains and cleaned their 9000 sq foot home themselves because of their fear help would steal their million dollar collection. My most significant mentor was a garden collector and he had a 100 by 300 foot backyard he personally transformed from a blackberry patch to one of the most enviable garden/ rare plant collections in the Northwest back in his day 30 years ago. My collection is my operatic vinyls which I have encased in plastic cases and displayed prominently in my apartment with Dame Joan front and center 
I also have the most art filled living space of anyone I know with framed prints and sculptures occupying pride of place on my walls. I admire people who have passions as too many people live basically generic lives devoid of real passions. Luckily this forum is full of people who are full of passionate interests. I ask people often what their hobbies are and they have none. How sad.
I also have the most art filled living space of anyone I know with framed prints and sculptures occupying pride of place on my walls. I admire people who have passions as too many people live basically generic lives devoid of real passions. Luckily this forum is full of people who are full of passionate interests. I ask people often what their hobbies are and they have none. How sad.
I wonder who is the painting with the woman in black? Does it say in the book? I like her Tiffany lamp. I adore Tiffany lamps. Their family painting looks so cozy and happy! I love Joan's chaise lounge! Their home is adorable! It looks like a gingerbread house come to life!
Whose idea were those acid-green blindings?
I hope little vases under the portraits don't contain ashes of depicted prima donnas.
I hope little vases under the portraits don't contain ashes of depicted prima donnas.
Thanks for posting…
I'll file this under once seen cannot be unseen though. Hell's bells what a collection of bad taste!
I am sure it cost a fortune to assemble and collect and I'm all for people collecting stuff if it makes them happy (ask me about my 19th & early 20th C travel guides.), but wowza, that Villa's interior took some gumption to assemble. 🙂
Look, I have nothing against Joan, fab voice in the right repertoire… Some of my best friends think she's stupendous… (Mr Sutherland however gives me the heebie jeebies.)
Edit:
Makes Callas' Paris apartment look positively "White Box, sweetie darling! White box!"
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I'll file this under once seen cannot be unseen though. Hell's bells what a collection of bad taste!
I am sure it cost a fortune to assemble and collect and I'm all for people collecting stuff if it makes them happy (ask me about my 19th & early 20th C travel guides.), but wowza, that Villa's interior took some gumption to assemble. 🙂
Look, I have nothing against Joan, fab voice in the right repertoire… Some of my best friends think she's stupendous… (Mr Sutherland however gives me the heebie jeebies.)
Edit:
Makes Callas' Paris apartment look positively "White Box, sweetie darling! White box!"
Thoughts for the morning: the Bonynge aesthetic of "limitless clutter" (an art term I just made up) is diametrically opposed to the Zen-influenced aesthetic of Japan. The Buddhist concept of sunyata, "emptiness," doesn't view unfilled space as devoid of meaning or value and in need of filling. The feeling that space must be filled is called horror vacui - Latin for "fear of emptiness" - and gives us art in which no space is left unfilled with detail and ornamentation. In Buddhist-influenced art, unfilled space may actually predominate, and is welcomed as both representative of and conducive to a state of meditation:
"a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience [which] adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them. This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in." (Thanissaro Bikkhu, American Buddhist monk and author)
Volumes have been written about the philosophical and psychological meaning of the concept of sunyata. In personal, purely artistic terms, though, I simply find open space beautiful and relaxing, and clutter oppressive and stressful. I wonder how people can stand living with so much stuff.
"a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience [which] adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them. This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in." (Thanissaro Bikkhu, American Buddhist monk and author)
Volumes have been written about the philosophical and psychological meaning of the concept of sunyata. In personal, purely artistic terms, though, I simply find open space beautiful and relaxing, and clutter oppressive and stressful. I wonder how people can stand living with so much stuff.
There must be sopranos out there, who prefer different, less aristocratic-conservative escapist home interiors ... interiors that are more ascetic, that appear less trapped, or maybe have some more modern or creative traits ...
I did a bit of research on the internet about relatively new Scandinavian names for example, but any illustrative material didn't turn up.
They must necessarily exist out there however, they must ... Please
I did a bit of research on the internet about relatively new Scandinavian names for example, but any illustrative material didn't turn up.
They must necessarily exist out there however, they must ... Please
I'd guess that it might be difficult for a famous diva's home not to become a cluttered museum, since celebrities are presumably given stuff all the time. But one might have special rooms for mementos, awards and such, and keep one's living space open.
Tamara Siniavskaya and her husband, pop-singer Muslim Magomayev. He began as an operatic baritone, lately turned to pop. He was Azerbaijanian. The whole apartment was this kind.
As you'd expect, Barbara Hannigan prefers a different lifestyle
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Richard Bonynge is a maximalist in style and I always enjoy seeing this style in photos though I would not want the style for myself.
There was obviously an effort to stage an aristocratic, stuffed, 19th-century environment in the house, and at least some of the innumerable antiquities/pseudo-antiquities are for real. And even regarding those that are just mimicking and kitsch, it's still the underlying ideal. I think a link to this article
on the subject was posted by 'Seattleoperafan' some months ago, where I focused only on the pictures of the interiors there. But it contains a somewhat interesting quote, by Bonynge:
"I caught the collecting bug when I came to London in 1950 at the age of twenty. I discovered junk stores and flea markets where I spent hours finding many treasures. For me they were real treasures, especially those connected with opera and then ballet and theatre in general. In those days I had no money, but wonderful pieces could be found for less than nothing. I remember eating just apples for a week at a time so I could spend my money elsewhere. Joan was very patient with my extravagances. We were absolute opposites – she did not desire possessions at all, and I became a passionate collector of many things."
Some of the paintings, such as Eduard Magnus' of Jenny Lind, are likely copies or simple reproductions, whereas the Bonynge-Sutherland own family portrait painting is very obviously ... unique. The couple certainly got rich later on, with houses in several parts of the world. RB, still alive, preferred to stay at the Swiss villa after Sutherland died.
I find it too difficult to deduce though from the pictures of the villa interiors, and the many painted portraits of Joan Sutherland there, that she really stuck to the claimed, earlier dis-interest in material items/goods. The evidence against it seems pretty overwhelming, also since there's simply no option for any rest for the eyes in that environment, and she must have approved the production of a large number of painted portraits of her, even though she perhaps wasn't sitting at sessions for them (I don't know about that).
on the subject was posted by 'Seattleoperafan' some months ago, where I focused only on the pictures of the interiors there. But it contains a somewhat interesting quote, by Bonynge:
"I caught the collecting bug when I came to London in 1950 at the age of twenty. I discovered junk stores and flea markets where I spent hours finding many treasures. For me they were real treasures, especially those connected with opera and then ballet and theatre in general. In those days I had no money, but wonderful pieces could be found for less than nothing. I remember eating just apples for a week at a time so I could spend my money elsewhere. Joan was very patient with my extravagances. We were absolute opposites – she did not desire possessions at all, and I became a passionate collector of many things."
Some of the paintings, such as Eduard Magnus' of Jenny Lind, are likely copies or simple reproductions, whereas the Bonynge-Sutherland own family portrait painting is very obviously ... unique. The couple certainly got rich later on, with houses in several parts of the world. RB, still alive, preferred to stay at the Swiss villa after Sutherland died.
I find it too difficult to deduce though from the pictures of the villa interiors, and the many painted portraits of Joan Sutherland there, that she really stuck to the claimed, earlier dis-interest in material items/goods. The evidence against it seems pretty overwhelming, also since there's simply no option for any rest for the eyes in that environment, and she must have approved the production of a large number of painted portraits of her, even though she perhaps wasn't sitting at sessions for them (I don't know about that).
The walls are busy patterns which are dizzying in their own right add to the clutter of paintings with busy scenes and frames... I would go freaking insane. As one said earlier, once seen it cannot be unseen!
There is my idea of maximalist luxury. The Vanderbilt Marble House in Newport. I'd love this dining room all decked out in pink numidian marble and gold leaf.
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Heaven!!!! But you would have to either stand or sit on the floor- neither option enticing to someone my age 🤣
Moving on to contemporary Diva Decor… here is (was?) Anna Netrebko's little place in New York.
Link. (NY Times Paywall alas)
Edit: OMG @Seattleoperafan what have you started?! Here I am Googling Diva Décor before my first coffee of the day! 🤣
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Link. (NY Times Paywall alas)
Edit: OMG @Seattleoperafan what have you started?! Here I am Googling Diva Décor before my first coffee of the day! 🤣
Bonynge always was a collector of things musically and he unearthed tons of material from the Bel Canto period to bring to the light of day. Many albums of Joan's material were of things never heard since the early part of the 20th century or before. He was also a conductor and so was concerned both with all the details ( tons of stuff) and an overarching theme ( all of it goes together) so he was consistent at home and professionally. He was a magpie but despite there being a lot of stuff, none of it clashes but goes together into a consistent whole throughout the very large house. He slept in a glorious Napoleonic twin bed in his room and Joan had a portrait of her husband over her bed. I did not like the colors in her room so I didn't post it, but I did very much like the guestrooms which had less clutter than the rest. There were beautiful paintings of both of them throughout the house.
I think I like the green bedroom with the twin beds the best, and although I'm not a fan of maximalism myself, after seeing Netrebko's apartment, the Bonynges' home displays exquisite taste by contrast.
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