The Australian opera legend, Dame Joan Sutherland, has died at the age of 83, but the ovations are continuing for the woman known as La Stupenda.
"The family of Dame Joan Sutherland ... wishes to let all her friends and admirers know that she passed away very peacefully in the evening of October 10 at her home in Switzerland after a long illness," a statement faxed to AFP by a family assistant said.
Sutherland lived in Montreux, by Lake Geneva, for many years since her retirement from the opera stage 20 years ago. She was born in Sydney on November 7, 1926.
She had reportedly been in frail health since breaking both her legs in a fall in 2008.
New Zealand diva Dame Kiri Te Kanawa said Dame Joan could never be equalled.
"She's totally unique and you will never ever hear another voice like that," Dame Kiri told ABC Radio on Tuesday.
"It was elite, it was supreme, no one could ever reach that. We've all tried but I think with a lot of us it failed."
Dame Kiri, who appeared many times on the opera stage with Dame Joan, said she was in another league.
"When you're young and stupid you actually feel you're almost equal," she said of her early appearances with La Stupenda.
"As time went on, the more I felt that I didn't deserve a place beside her at all.
Opera Australia artistic director Lyndon Terracini said Dame Joan had a great presence.
"She was tremendously down to earth and tremendously joyous to be with," Mr Terracini told ABC Radio.
"When she came into the rehearsal room the whole place would light up and I think in performances I think that joy communicated from the stage to an audience in quite an extraordinary.
Dame Joan, who made her name in the UK, along with her conductor husband Richard Bonynge, had done much for opera in Australia, Mr Terracini said.
On their return to Australia their opera company had given many others opportunities and in her role as Opera Australia music director, Dame Joan had boosted the art's profile.
"I think she transcended not only the operatic form but was a great communicator to the wider public," Mr Terracini said.
"I think it would be fair to say she was Bradmanesque."
Her biographer Dame Norma Major, a friend for many years, said: "A great light has gone out."
"For me and countless others she was the greatest coloratura soprano of the 20th century.
"Her glorious voice brought to us operas that were rarely heard, but which are now in the standard repertoire of international opera houses.
"Joan may have left us, but her music will live on. We are so lucky that her career spanned a time of great advances in recording techniques, and she leaves an enormous legacy of recorded music that will continue to delight her legions of admirers and future generations of music lovers."
Dame Joan led the renaissance of Italian bel canto and French romantic operas, reviving roles of extraordinary difficulty.
She was "the voice of the century", according to Luciano Pavarotti, the late, great Italian tenor. The Spanish diva Montserrat Caballe said her voice was like heaven.
On many lists of the world's greatest sopranos, Sutherland ranks second only to Maria Callas.
Sutherland's first training was sitting at her mother Muriel's feet as she practised. She didn't start serious voice training until she was 18.
In 1951, after winning the Sun Aria, she went to London to continue her studies with the opera school of the Royal College of Music.
Soon after, she joined the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as a utility soprano, earning ten pounds a week. She made her debut there as the First Lady in Mozart's The Magic Flute in October 1952.
But it was seven years later that Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli directed one of her defining performances at Covent Garden, Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor.
When the production went to La Scala in Italy, she became known as La Stupenda.
Zeffirelli, speaking just after he learned of Sutherland's death, remembered her with great fondness.
"She meant so much to me," he said. "In a certain moment of my life, we were so close. We made our careers at the same moment. Anyway, I have no words ..."
In 1954, she married the Australian conductor and pianist Richard Bonynge. It was to be a life-long and mutually supportive partnership. They had a son, Adam.
Her last performances were at the Sydney Opera House and London's Covent Garden in 1990.
She was Australian of the Year in 1961 and one of Australia's living legends.
The family statement said Sutherland is survived by her husband, their son, Adam, daughter-in-law Helen, and two grandchildren.
Dame Joan requested a very small and private funeral, the statement said.
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