Anna Netrebko: Opera Arias

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Music reviews of Anna Netrebko: Opera Arias

Music Review: Good, not great (yet)
Rating: 3 Stars

In short, the two Mozart arias are not elegant enough. She makes some heavy weather of the florid runs (especially in Non mi dir) which seems surprising given the other arias on the disc. The staccati are executed well though.

The french arias are also somewhat problematic. The aria from Benvenuto Cellini, arguably a bit of a signature role for her, doesn't work that well, and her Manon lacks humour and wit, and a touch of elegance. She doesn't really get behind the words, and has some funny pronunciations. The high D's in the Gavotte
also sounds uncomfortable.

Then we move to happier times. For me, she seems to connect to the two belcanto composers much better than the pieces that went before. Her Lucia scene perhaps lacks the ultimate degree of word painting and the sense of impending doom, but
it is extremely well sung, and the cabaletta well executed, although I didn't agree with her choices a few ornamental decisions. Her concluding high note is slightly better than on the Manon track, but those don't seem to be her "money-notes", as it were. They are more comfortable than the ones Angela Gheorghiu makes on her bel canto disc, but still...

The Sonnambula scene is, for me, almost a complete success. She sings well, manages to create a character in the process, and the florid work is done with grace and elegance, an element sometimes missing in the other arias. Again, the concluding accuto (E flat?) is done well enough, but not extremely comfortable. All in all I would say this is the best aria on the disc.

The Marguerite aria is given with a little bit of recitative, and she sings it well, with a strong high C at the end, although the tempi chosen for the aria are most peculiar. The conductor slows down considerably at the end, where
others go faster. I guess this could work as a hightening of Marguerite's dream-like state at seeing herself in the mirror, but I'm still not sure if I like it. Have to give it a few more listenings I guess. What almost disqualifies the presence of this aria is her lack of a good trill. If any aria needs it, it's this one, and Netrebko doesn't deliber the goods.

The Rusalka aria. Why, o why, if you've got the Vienna Philharmonic at your disposal, do you choose to omit the superb harp intro to this beautiful piece? It considerably mars the sense of momentum for me, since it really sets the dreamy mood. She sings well, although with less refulgence than a Fleming can
bring to it. A bit anonymously, though. Again, strong high note at the end, although she could have held on to it a bit longer...

The Musetta aria is a charming, if slightly puzzling, way to close the disc. Why not choose another belcanto piece? She sings it charmingly enough, with a degree of humour, and gets behind the character more than I've heard her do on other
items on the disc, but I would much rather have heard her in something earlier ottocento Italian. I think, for instance, that "Oh quante volte" from Bellini's I Capuletti ed i Montecchi would have been a perfect fit for her voice.

So, in conclusion; a rather gorgeous voice (with looks to match), with a distinct, but pleasant, Slavic quality to it, with a deal of maturing to do artistically. Could ascend
to greatness if she learns how to identify a bit more with her roles. And either chooses her repertoire to suit her gifts and apparent flaws (uncomfortable high notes, lack of trill), or do some more training in this department.

Description of Anna Netrebko: Opera Arias

Her name was barely known in Europe, although she had spent the last nine years as a member of the Mariinsky Opera in St Petersburg, a company which, run by the mighty Valery Gergiev, was familiar in the West from its frequent international tours. She had studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory opposite the theatre and performed various odd jobs for the company, including working as a cleaner, in order to get closer to the world of opera and learn the tricks of the trade at first hand.

On winning the 1993 Moscow Glinka Competition, Anna Netrebko was offered a permanent engagement with the Mariinsky Opera. Shortly afterwards she made her German debut, appearing as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro during a visit by the Mariinsky company to the 1994 Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. She then hit the headlines in San Francisco in Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila. Elsewhere, too, her repertory was remarkably wide-ranging: in St Petersburg and on tour, she was heard as Rossini's Rosina, Mozart's Queen of Night and Pamina, Bizet's Micaëla, Donizetti's Adina, and Ninetta in Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges and Louisa in the same composer's Betrothal in a Monastery. It was in St Petersburg in 1998 that she first essayed the role of Violetta Valéry. Shortly afterwards she made her Salzburg Festival debut as a Flowermaiden in concert performances of Parsifal under Gergiev.

But otherwise Anna Netrebko rarely had to perform secondary roles. The Russian repertory, too, was largely ignored, for it includes few important parts for a lyric coloratura voice. The chief exception was her sensitive Natasha in Prokofiev's War and Peace, which she sang on tour for the Mariinsky when the company visited London, New York, Milan and Madrid. "Audrey Hepburn with a voice" she was called at that time.

Instead, the roles she chose for her various debuts included Bellini's Amina, Donizetti's Lucia, Antonia in Les Contes d'Hoffmann, a lighthearted Teresa in Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini in Amsterdam, Gilda in Washington, Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo in San Francisco, Musetta in La bohème, Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Nanetta in Falstaff. Gergiev's fledgling soprano took flight, principally in America.

Then came Salzburg. A woman in a Prada dress captivated the Festival's snobbish audience with a veritable flood of sound. It was the first time for many years that Salzburg audiences had heard such impassioned and yet lean-toned singing, the coloratura exactly in place, the voice fully rounded in its lower register and yet free and bell-like in its upper reaches, the tone quality slightly veiled yet with a shimmering sheen to it. The sensation of this memorable evening was neither the extreme tempi adopted by the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt nor Martin Kusej's coolly puzzling production but Anna Netrebko's Donna Anna, her seeming naturalness concealing supreme artistry and self-discipline, her singing marked by crystalline coloratura and fluent passagework.

A star was born, and the rest is history. Within three years at the most - the date of her Salzburg Violetta alongside Rolando Villazón in 2005 - "La Netrebko" had established herself as the prima donna of the 21st century with advertising contracts, open-air concerts and film and television appearances. And yet opera remains her professional focus. She even reprised the role of Donna Anna in another prestigious opening night - on 7 December 2011 to mark the new season at La Scala, Milan.

Anna Netrebko's Salzburg appearances in this role were not officially documented, but her second-act aria, "Non mi dir", featured in her first solo album, which was released in July 2003 with the simple, straightforward title Opera Arias, its cover showing a young woman of girlish beauty gazing directly at the camera. The CD was a visiting card bringing together arias from her present and future repertory: Teresa, Lucia, Ilia, Amina, Musetta and Massenet's Manon, which she first sang onstage in 2006 and which remains one of her favourite roles. Others, such as Gounod's Marguerite, are ones she is only now starting to consider singing in their entirety, while others again still await her. Here one thinks of Rusalka, a role one hopes she may be persuaded to sing onstage not only because her "Song to the Moon" is invested with such a wonderful sense of yearning. It was her only foray into the Slav repertory among all the Italian and French arias. A Russian album followed three years later.

For her Deutsche Grammophon debut Anna Netrebko found herself in distinguished company, accompanied as she was by the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Gianandrea Noseda, a conductor with considerable experience in the field of opera. A handful of mezzo-soprano interjections were added by the soprano's up-and-coming colleague El?na Garan?a. The album reveals a young and sympathetically fresh voice with a distinctive timbre in some of the most beautiful soprano arias, which she performs with a touching naïveté but also with real skill. No more, but it is a lot. As such, the release held out a promise that in the meantime has been kept in the finest possible way.

Manuel Brug

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