Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge celebrity print 1974

Summary

This concrete handprint was formerly located as a part of the iconic McEwans celebrity pavement. Between 1972 and 1994, scores of celebrities had their handprints and footprints immortalised in cement at the entrance to the McEwans hardware store on Bourke Street. The City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection acquired a number of these impressed concrete slabs from the original celebrity pavement in 2005.

"Joan Sutherland (1926-2010) was an Australian opera singer – a dramatic coloratura soprano – known as La Stupenda and widely considered one of the finest sopranos of all time. Richard Bonynge (born 1930) was a pianist and opera conductor. He and Sutherland married in 1954 and Bonynge took up conducting in 1963, after which he conducted nearly all of Sutherland’s performances. In August 1974, Sutherland was fresh from her first performance at the Sydney Opera House. Sutherland and Bonynge left their prints at McEwans the day after a sold-out recital at the Dallas Brooks Hall." - Robyn Annear, 2023