Anna Netrebko:

Anna Netrebko is no longer just the darling of the opera world: she is enchanting audiences around the globe while continuing to cultivate the respect and admiration of opera’s most devoted and demanding fans.  Her beautiful, dark and distinctive voice, together with her elegant and alluring stage presence, have prompted critics to hail the Russian soprano as “Audrey Hepburn with a voice,”[i][i] and “a singer who simply has it all: a voice of astounding purity, precision and scope, extensive dynamic and tonal range, imagination, insight and wit –a ll combined with a dazzling charisma that makes it all but impossible to look away when she is performing.”[ii][ii] 

Since her triumphant Salzburg Festival debut in 2002 as Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Anna Netrebko has gone on to appear with nearly all of the world’s great opera companies, including the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, Munich’s Bavarian State Opera, the Berlin State Opera, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin.  She also frequently returns to the Kirov Opera at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg (where she began by cleaning the floors during her conservatory days and later made her stage debut as Susana in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro in 1994) to collaborate with her longtime mentor, conductor Valery Gergiev.

Anna Netrebko made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2002 as Natasha in Prokofiev’s War and Peace, a role she has also sung at London’s Covent Garden, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala and Madrid’s Teatro Real.  Netrebko’s other signature roles include Mimì in Puccini’s La bohème, Giulietta in Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Norina in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Adina in his L’elisir d’amore, Ilia in Mozart’s Idomeneo, the title roles in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and in Massenet’s Manon, Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Elvira in Bellini’s I puritani, Juliette in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Amina in Bellini’s La sonnambula, and Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata.

Ms. Netrebko also appears extensively in concerts and recitals throughout the world, both in revered music halls such as London’s Barbican Hall and Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and in outdoor arenas in front of tens-of-thousands of people. The Berlin Concert: Live From The Waldbühne – an outdoor appearance with Plácido Domingo and Rolando Villazón on the eve of the 2006 World Cup Final – was performed in front of an audience of 20,000, watched on television by millions, and became a best-selling DVD.  Netrebko made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2007 in a sold-out concert with baritone Dimitri Hvorostovsky, and later that year she headlined the BBC’s tradition-rich “Last Night of the Proms” at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

At only 36 years of age, Anna Netrebko boasts a discography that is already quite extensive and includes solo albums, complete opera recordings, and DVDs.  Her solo discs for the venerable Deutsche Grammophon label – Opera Arias, Sempre libera, and Russian Album – have all been bestsellers, as have her audio recordings and DVDs of La traviata and Le nozze di Figaro and her DVD of music videos, Anna Netrebko: The Woman, The Voice.  To date, all of her albums have earned platinum status in Germany and Austria.  Her new CD, Duets, with her frequent stage partner, tenor Rolando Villazón, claimed the top spot on the Billboard classical chart shortly after its release in the U.S., and in Europe Duets set a record for the best debut ever for a classical album, climbing to the top of the pop charts in several countries.

Further confirming her status as “the reigning new diva of the early 21st century,”[iii][iii] in 2007 Anna Netrebko became the first opera singer ever to be named to the TIME 100 list—Time magazine’s list of the most influential people in the world.  Other honors and awards include a Grammy nomination for her recording Violetta, Musical America’s 2008 “Musician of the Year,” Germany’s prestigious Bambi Award, the UK’s Classical BRIT Award for “Singer of the Year,” five German Echo Klassik awards, and the Russian State Prize – the country’s highest award in the field of arts and literature – which was bestowed on her in 2005 by President Vladimir Putin.

Highlights of Anna Netrebko’s current season include Roméo et Juliette with the Metropolitan Opera; La traviata in her debut with Deutsche Oper Berlin and in her return to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; her debut with the Opéra de Paris in I Capuleti e i Montecchi; Manon with the Vienna State Opera; and further performances of Roméo et Juliette with the Salzburg Festival.  On the concert stage, she appears in performances of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater at Vienna’s Musikverein and as Bellini’s Giulietta at Vienna’s Konzerthaus.  She also returns to the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin for a concert led by Daniel Barenboim.