Joan Sutherland, 83, Australian soprano

GENEVA, Switzerland - Joan Sutherland, 83, the Australian soprano whose mastery of tone, astonishing range, and vocal control vaulted her into opera's pinnacle, has died after a four-decade career that won her praise as the successor to the legend Maria Callas.

Nicknamed "La Stupenda" - the Stupendous One - by fans after a fantastic 1960 performance of Handel's Alcina and called by the tenor Luciano Pavarotti "the voice of the century," she died Sunday at her home near Geneva, after a long illness.

Italian director Franco Zeffirelli recalled that she was discovered by Tullio Serafin, who urged Zeffirelli to direct her in the 1959 Covent Garden performance of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor that launched her to stardom.

"He said, 'I want you to meet someone - don't worry about her looks.' We went to the theater and I saw her, as big as a sergeant in the army with a terrible Australian accent. . . . [S]he started to sing, and she conquered me. I said, my God, it is going to be big trouble for Callas."

Pavarotti, who joined with Marilyn Horne in Ms. Sutherland's farewell recital at Covent Garden on Dec. 31, 1990, called her "the greatest coloratura soprano of all time."

With a soprano that stretched three octaves, she could have taken many paths. While under contract at Covent Garden she sang Mozart, Poulenc, Verdi, even Wagner. But in 1954 she married pianist/conductor Richard Bonynge, who persuaded her that "bel canto" - beautiful singing - was best for her.

Ms. Sutherland soon was seen as the preeminent singer of Italian bel canto and often considered Callas' successor. Callas herself, after seeing a 1959 dress rehearsal of Lucia, prophesied a fine career for her before reportedly saying, "Only we know how much greater I am."

Ms. Sutherland was preeminent in reviving Italian bel canto operas. If she didn't project Callas' raw passion, she was steadier, maintaining a perfect vocal line in tough roles like Bellini's Norma.

"She had more vocal flexibility than Callas," said Lotfi Mansouri, former general director of the San Francisco Opera. "Joan is one of the absolutely greatest in the field of opera in the last 30 years."

She was known as the anti-diva diva; Mansouri said she only argued with him when she thought he overestimated her, as she did when he directed her in a 1985 Toronto production of Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet. "She said: 'I'm a grandmother. You don't want me to do Ophelia.' Finally I convinced her. She was absolutely wonderful."

Horne said, "There aren't a lot of singers who do something original, something that really contributes to the history of the world of music, and Joan is one of those people. She not only sang gloriously but she has revived all these fabulous things."

She started singing as a child, crouching under the piano and copying her mother, Muriel Alston Sutherland, a talented mezzo-soprano. When she began performing in Australia, Ms. Sutherland thought she too was a mezzo; only later could coaches persuade her to develop her higher range.

She left school at 16 to be a secretary but continued studying with her mother until she won a scholarship. At 20 she made her concert debut in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, then moved to London in 1951 and, after three auditions, was accepted for Covent Garden, debuting in The Magic Flute.

Ms. Sutherland continued to develop at Covent Garden, training as a dramatic Wagnerian soprano. But with Bonynge's encouragement she began to strengthen her higher range and in 1959 starred in the title role in Lucia.

Mezzo and Curtis Institute of Music vocal teacher Marlena Kleinman Malas recalled Monday hearing Ms. Sutherland for the first time in 1958.

"I was at Covent Garden listening to Carmen, and this woman in a big blue cloak came out, and the sound just enveloped the entire theater with such warmth and quality," said Malas, whose husband, bass-baritone Spiro Malas, later became a frequent Sutherland collaborator. "I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. Then she went on to do Lucia and the rest is history."

She was a favorite in Italy from her 1960 debut in Zeffirelli's production of Handel's Alcina in Venice and graced La Scala's stage in her prime, singing five roles there between 1961 to 1966.

Her much-anticipated U.S. debut came in Alcina on Nov. 16, 1960, in Dallas; four days later, again with the Dallas Opera, she appeared as Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni. Both performances were praised in the local press and in New York, where she debuted with the American Opera Society in a February 1961 Town Hall concert of Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda.

Critics loved her, as they did after her debut in Lucia at the Metropolitan Opera that November. In Philadelphia, she was a guest at the Academy of Music Anniversary Concert and Ball in 1963, 1967, and 1970.

Queen Elizabeth made her a dame of the British Empire in 1978. When she was one of six recipients of the 2004 Kennedy Center Honors, baritone Sherrill Milnes called her "the standard by which all others are measured."

She is survived by Bonynge, son Adam, a daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. Her funeral, the family said, will be small and private.