Figures from the opera world are paying tribute to Dame Joan Sutherland, one of the great opera singers of the 20th century, who has died aged 83.

The Australian soprano died at her Swiss home after a long illness.

Known as La Stupenda - the stunning one - for her incredible voice and performances, she was well known in the opera houses of Europe, North America and, of course, her native Australia.

She had been suffering ill health for some time and died at home with her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, and son Adam at her side.

Leave your tribute to Dame Joan.

In later years she had retired to a Swiss town near Montreux and had made few recent public appearances.

Opera singers and directors from around the world have been praising the prodigious talent and generous spirit of a woman credited with sharing her knowledge with many up and coming young performers.

Former Sydney Opera House chief Norman Gillespie called Sutherland "one of the great operatic icons of the 20th century".

"Extraordinary range, dazzling range, extraordinary accuracy, extraordinary power. There really only was one voice like that, it was the great voice of the century," he said.

Dame Joan came to prominence in the late 1950s and soon earned her nickname after a performance in Italy in 1960.

She performed with many great singers during her career, including Luciano Pavarotti, who described her as having "the voice of the century".

Her most famous role was the lead in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, which she performed 233 times. One performance of the role in 1959 was acknowledged with a 19-minute standing ovation.

The young Joan Sutherland grew up in Sydney. She earned her fare to Britain by singing at local clubs and working as a typist at Sydney University.

Her father, a tone-deaf Scottish immigrant, died when she was six

In 1981 she spoke to the BBC about the influence her mother had had on her career choice.

"I think I learned a great deal at her knee. I used to sit down underneath the piano stool while she practised," Sutherland said.

"She used to practise, although she didn't sing professionally, she still kept up her scales and exercises and vocalese and I learnt so many of these from about the age of three.

"We used to stand around the piano and sing duets and trios and so on.

"I wasn't actually trained by my mother. She said she never taught me, but she was a great singer herself."

Against the advice of her mother, Bonynge encouraged her to sing in lighter, higher roles that better suited her voice.

"I would notice when she wasn't consciously singing, that she was singing quite differently in a very natural way, and to me, a much more beautiful way," Bonynge said.

"The voice at the top just didn't want to stop. It was effortless."

Soon, all the world's top opera houses were calling. She had assumed all the bel canto roles from the most famous operas of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The extent of her repertoire was immense: 54 leading roles from Handel to Mozart and Puccini to Verdi.

A 40-year career ended with final performances at the Sydney Opera House and at Covent Garden in 1990.

She was a Dame of the British Empire, a Companion of the Order of Australia, and was bestowed with one of the rarest of gifts from the Queen: an Order of Merit.

Tributes

Opera director John Copley was one of her many friends and admirers.

"She was very, very straightforward. She was a very nice Australian girl, in the nicest possible way," Copley said.

"We always got on very well, I think, partly because we'd grown up together and I'd seen her develop and we were mates, we were sort of chums.

"And I think that people didn't realise just how hard she actually did work."

New Zealand opera star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa says Dame Joan was an inspiration to a generation of performers.

"She was a bit like the Pied Piper - we followed her to the top of the hill and hopefully we got there too," Dame Kiri said.

"It's just so sad, but she had a wonderful career. It wasn't as if she didn't complete the career, she gave us so much. It's a huge legacy of what she left behind."

Norman Gillespie says Dame Joan will be remembered as one of the great operatic icons of the 20th century.

"The legacy is there in the recordings. We're so fortunate she made so many, all from Handel up to the romantic period, Donizetti and Bellini," he said.

"She will live on forever with that extraordinary voice.

"She was a great ambassador for Australia, loved and celebrated all around the world - extraordinary voice, extraordinary woman."

Her funeral will be a small family commemoration.