Remarkable things go on in the annals of culture, but of course they now go almost completely under the radar and few people know about them. Certainly the corporate media couldn’t care less. But some people do.
JUST found out that in 2012, Richard Davis’s Wotan’s Daughter: The Life of Marjorie Lawrence was published by Wakefield Press in Australia. Yesterday I ordered it on Amazon.
Richard Bonynge wrote a preface, where he recalls first hearing her as a teenager in Australia in 1944, and then describes the elderly Lawrence singing Waltzing Maathilde at a UNICEF concert in New York in 1976 where he and Sutherland also performed. The audience was in tears.
Why isn’t this book at the Metropolitan Opera gift shop? Or did I miss something? Well, I did, I missed this book when it first came out.
Also, Desiree Records as part of its Great Australian Voices series has issued a four-CD compilation of Lawrence, including lots of private and unpublished tracks.
You can order that on eBay. I just did.