“Chalet Monet is a house with a thousand stories. It is living history, theatrical, a beautiful home with enormous spirit like its owners. It radiates grandeur yet intimacy with places to sit and contemplate, views to linger over, books to be read, paintings to admire and music to listen to. It is a treasure trove for the senses where many a story has been told or begun. Only its walls and its owners remember the decades of music making here and possibly the odd neighbour and the cows on the grassy slopes”.
Joan Sutherland & Richard Bonynge Foundation
This September, Richard Bonynge and the Joan Sutherland & Richard Bonynge Foundation launched this stunning new book in honour of Richard Bonynge’s 90th birthday and his lifelong partnership with Dame Joan Sutherland. Inside its 344 pages, over 1000 photographs bring to life the lavish home of the greatest international cultural icons in opera, Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE and her husband, Maestro Richard Bonynge AC CBE.
High on the slopes of the village of Les Avants, overlooking Lake Geneva in Switzerland, Chalet Monet is a spectacularly unique residence, brimming with antiques, paintings and objets d’art. The opulence of each of the distinctive rooms over the four floors and vistas is artfully captured in stunning photography.
In his charming, eloquent, conversational style, Richard Bonynge takes us inside the home he has shared with Dame Joan, and in so doing provides rare insight into their lives, the lives of opera and movie stars, royalty, presidents and cultural icons whom they called friends and neighbours.
The Tait Memorial Trust has been fortunate to obtain a limited number of copies for sale as part of Richard Bonynge’s London birthday celebrations and to support the new Tait Award in Richard’s name. We are thankful to Melbourne Books for donating books in support of this initiative. The Tait Memorial Trust has 10 copies personally signed by Richard to award to the first 10 people who donate £250 or more to the new Tait Memorial Trust award set up in honour of Richard Bonynge. These will become a significant collector’s item. This is a great opportunity to become the owner of one of these special books, or to give to a friend as a very special gift, and in doing so to support young musical artists.
The profit from books sold on behalf of the TMT at the usual price of £80 standard book (plus P&P) and £250 special limited signed copy (plus P&P) will go directly to the new award.