[4] She was a Principal Soprano with Opera Australia for 32 years, and was particularly associated with the title roles of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca and Madama Butterfly.
[5] Her first experience of opera as a child was hearing Mozart's The Magic Flute, and then Richard Strauss's Salome sung by Joan Hammond.
[10] Her career with OA saw her sing such other roles as Tosca and Madama Butterfly many times, as well as Marguérite (Faust), Gilda (Rigoletto), Queen Elizabeth (Maria Stuarda; opposite Deborah Riedel in the title role),[11][12] Desdemona (Otello), Leonora (Il trovatore and La forza del destino), Violetta (La traviata), Tatiana (Eugene Onegin), Mimi (La bohème), most of the Mozart heroines, including Donna Anna and Elvira (Don Giovanni), the Countess (The Marriage of Figaro), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Vitellia (La clemenza di Tito), plus Richard Strauss's Feldmarschallin (Der Rosenkavalier), Ellen Orford (Peter Grimes), the four heroines performed in English and then French, in The Tales of Hoffmann, Eva (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Elisabetta (Don Carlos), and the title roles in Lakmé, Alcina, Adriana Lecouvreur and Suor Angelica.
[13] Overseas, she sang Gilda (Rigoletto) at Covent Garden in 1974, Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) at the 1977 Glyndebourne Festival (in the production by Sir Peter Hall)[4] and with the Metropolitan Opera in 1978.
[13] She played the Mother Abbess in the Adelaide season of The Sound of Music[13][14] having begun her stage career as understudy to June Bronhill in 1960, in The Merry Widow.
That same day she also sang in the world premiere of Peter Sculthorpe's Child of Australia at the Opera House, with narrator John Howard and the Sydney Philharmonia Choir and Australian Youth Orchestra under Carlo Felice Cillario.
In 2000 she stepped in at very short notice to sing Tosca in Adelaide for an ailing friend, Deborah Riedel who subsequently died of liver cancer at the age of 50.
In 2003, she created the role of "Public Opinion", based on the Australian political figure Pauline Hanson, in the Sydney season of Opera Australia's new production of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld.
[4] On 2 June 2003, Joan Carden sang at a ceremony at the Melbourne Town Hall to launch Australia Post's new series of stamps commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
It opened in Sydney to high praise from the critics, but the run was cut short due to poor ticket sales, and the planned Brisbane and Melbourne seasons were cancelled.
[23] She was Patron of the now defunct National Voice Centre at the University of Sydney, the Victorian College of the Arts Opera, and the Musical Society of Victoria.
Joan Carden made a number of recordings, videos and DVDs, including La traviata;[24] The People's Diva, which showed her in rehearsal and preparation for Madama Butterfly;[25] and Great Operatic Heroines, with the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra under Roderick Brydon.
Ah, fors'è lui " from Verdi's La traviata is heard in the film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
[28] There is also the G. F. Carden Leukemia Research Foundation, funding from which facilitated treatment pioneered by Professor Don Metcalfe that saved the life of many people, including José Carreras.