ORF reports a 17 percent market share for this weekend’s TV screening of Aida from Salzburg with Anna Netrebko in the title role.
An estimated 473,000 viewers tuned in from the outset, this highest rating since Salzburg’s Bohème 2012, with Netrebko as Mimi.
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she is always a good girl 😉
The opera might have had something to do with it!
Bread-and-butter operas always do attract the largest audiences for these transmissions (witness the Met Opera; their biggest sellers are still Boheme, Turandot, etc.). But let’s be fair and give credit where credit is due. Ms. Netrebko has star power in spades and no number of naysayers can take that away. We could use a few more like her; they are in short supply. For a first outing in this role, she did an estimable job. Let’s hope she keeps it in her rep to fully flesh it out both vocally and dramatically. Oh, yes…let’s not forget Maestro Muti.
The Yoncheva Baroque evening in Salzburg was REAL artistry.. of course, not hyped or showered with glitter, so few will know!
For me, the depths of Muti’s interpretations are not obvious until second hearing, or better yet, side-by-side comparison with other interpretations, and so it is with Netrebko’s Aida with Muti. Here, this Aida can be viewed on arte for awhile.
Critics might say it lacks the blood and heat of say Solti and Price, but Muti and Netrebko bring out the musicality and organicity of Verdi that is obliterated by over-emotive singing and playing that distorts the lines Verdi wrote. With Muti, Verdi is revealed to be closer to Schubert than to Puccini.
Forget about the set, costumes, production: Not Eurotrash, but Middle-eastern-trash brought to you by a “famous” Iranian video artist. Total pastiche, totally hackneyed. Did she even do the minimum of homework and looked at other productions (if just on youtube)? Did she not realize she did not bring a single original idea to the opera?
On my second “viewing” of the opera, I put the sound on the stereo and ignored the images.
On a side note, Netrebko’s “blackface” was very obvious on TV. The real problem I have isn’t so much that she looked like she slathered on chocolate pudding, but that she is the darkest person on stage, darker than her own father Amonasro, darker than all the other Ethiopian prisoners of war, who of course didn’t resort to dark makeup, which makes her look odd. It becomes distracting really, aside from the politics of it all.
Herrera – unfortunately, most people don’t go for a “second hearing” – and conductors and singers should assume so!
The transmission (and the singing) contained as much excitement as my used kitchen rag. And I am a Muti admirer. But here he seemed unmotivated or maybe he has lost his mojo, and the Vienna, workaday. That a few voices have been heard saying such nonsense as “Netrebko is the best Aida since Leontyne Price” only exposes the magnitude of the despair in the business for “stars”, ignorance or hype or all three. More likely 1 and 3.
I certainly resent Ungeheuer,s comments, very dismissive, perhaps pompous ! Netrebko was more enjoyable to listen to and watch than Tebaldi or Price IMO. She has the power of Price but sang in a way that emphasised the plot and story. Tebaldi dodged the last high ‘C’ and cut short her high note in the aria O Patria Mia.
I have been an opera fan since my mother introduced me to it with Caruso and Gigli recordings. I loved the tenors initially because they tended to be the stars. Very few soprano’s commanded the stage as Netrebko does and that is the opinion of Domingo who is an expert worth listening to. Every great singer has fans and critics even Callas and Pavarotti so your opinion is valued but not in the supercilious way you composed it.