What now for Netrebko?
OperaThe diva is 52 years old and on her own.
She can choose between embracing Putin onc e more or denouncing him sufficiently to appease western employers who are anyway eager to harness her undiminished box-office power.
Once that decision is made, she has seven or eight years to make her mark.
Underemployment since 2022 has kept the voice fresh and may extend its span by a couple of years.
If she mends her bridges with Universal Music – whom she walked out on – she could be making six or eight recordings a year.
And then there are arena concerts. A well-placed confessional interview with a solid German newspaper will set the scene.
The future is looking clearer and quite bright for Anna Netrebko. It’s a new page in her career and she can start writing it right now.
Retirement!!!!
“Denouncing him sufficiently to appease western employers”.
Does cancel culture contain such an option?
A demand for an apology is usually one more way of cancelling, an apology or a refusal leading to cancellation.
Also, Putin is not losing the war.
Honestly, who cares?
We have bigger problems than Netrebko career…
Maybe get a good stylist and an oligarch?
Such a superficial analysis, that proves once again how swallow you are.
Again about Putin… leave her alone! She has already made a clear statement 2 years ago.
The MET had to pay a lot of money for dismissing her unjustly.
“She could be making six or eight recordings a year”… in which planet do you live on? Nobody in this business manages to do even half of it.
“Again about Putin”???? Do you follow any news?
Anna would have said anything necessary to save her career. Most were intelligent enough to see beyond her weak protestations.
She could take a hard look at her fashion choices?
No kidding. What’s that supposed to be — snowmobile chic?
Why? Her fashion choices are HERS except when she is on stage. Freedom of choice is what I and many others have fought for over 60 years.
The colossal chain around her neck doesn’t work?
Is that a question or a statement? If it’s the former, you need to reformulate the sentence.
Indeed, her future looks much brighter now than a couple of years ago. That said, I very much doubt that any record company will release more than two or three albums of any artist in a year, even Netrebko, Kaufmann or Callas reborn.
Deeply sexist “article”. Did Hugh write this one?
Sexist? Please explain.
She will sing in Nabucco in Berlin, Ariadne and Lisa in Vienna next season, and Amelia in Ballo in Maschera, thereafter in Naples. I got tickets for all.
Too bad for your ears, and with the state of most “artistic” direction, also your eyes.
Good luck catching Anna in another opera in German, unless she plans to again use an earphone. I predict a cancellation.
Let us hope she makes the right decision.
I laughed so hard reading this. Why would her future look clearer or brighter because she separated from her husband? Fresh voice? 6-8 recordings a year?? Classical music recordings are quite extinct anyway..and she never had the voice for recordings. If I want to listen to a notable recording, I would turn to Fleming, Gheorghiu, Caballe, Callas, or other sopranos from the Golden Age.
Netrebko is way past her prime, sounds even worse than some older active sopranos. Popular – yes, no one can deny it…but her singing and acting are mediocre, her voice has declined tremendously over the past 4 years. I saw her live last year in Milan and was shocked of how bad she sounds now.
But every critic praises her. So? Where is the truth?
Those bling-y outfits aren’t going to pay for themselves; she needs to Go On Singing.
Re denouncing Putin; Does she have family living in Russia? If you did, would you denounce Putin?
Somehow I find this singer entirely, absolutely, devastatingly uninteresting, how good she may be and how much I enjoyed her appearance in Prokofiev’s ‘Marriage in the Cloister’.
A new page, simply because she is divorcing her husband? Do you believe she has ever been defined by a man? Her child, perhaps. Her career, perhaps. By her country, perhaps. But by a zenophobic second-rate talent?
Ms. Netrebko’s political taint was self-inflicted. Maya Angelou was correct: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
On what planet did you find “kept her voice fresh?” She was lovely once, but squandered that by pushing a pleasant lyric voice into unsuitable dramatic roles. She’ll never be a dramatic soprano regardless of pocketing enormous fees for shabby, yowled, forced Turandots and Abigailles. No one is making classical recordings anymore. Our world has more serious issues than worrying about the possibility of Miss N’s Norma and Isolde.
She can sing in Las Vegas with another has-been diva, Angela Gheorghiu.
Gheorghiu sounds a thousand times better than Netrebko, always did and still does
Trebs and La Draculeti doing a residency double act in some Las Vegas lounge – yes, that’s about their level of tackiness. Though I doubt there is room for more than one ego of their magnitude on any stage.
Going by the photo with this post, Trebs is already dressed for it lol… or maybe launching a side career in a dungeon for those who have that disposition and deep pockets to match. The chain is rather telling.
Well said – couldn’t agree more!
I remember her as a student at the conservatory in St Petersburg. The voice was nothing special but the connection with Gergiev was and that’s what created her stratospheric and undeserved rise to fame. A fixed competition where she failed to turn up for her scheduled slot, the 2 western judges on the panel said she should be disqualified and Gergiev and his sister pushed her through and made her win. Yuck. Everything about her is distasteful and tainted.
Might we have a lot more information about this occasion, properly sourced so that it doesn’t sound like the usual bitchy talk?
Underemployed? HA HA HA Have you looked at her calender? The women rushes from one engagement to the other. Gelb was an idiot to dismiss her. She thrives all over the world, he desperately needs her not the other way round.
6-8 recordings per year? HA HA HA again. Even Pavarotti in his haydays didn’t produce such quantity and back then there were actually stores and clients.
The queen of Tacky shall not violate audience’s eyes and ears.
Bolshoi & Mariinsky
As Dolly Parton once said, it takes a lot of money to look this trashy.
A talent marvelous artist caught in a maelstrom of politics and war. Let her perform. Let’s not lose this great talent to pettiness and social shaming.
Define “caught”. Exposed, perhaps.
There is nothing “petty” about hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians and Russians.
Social shaming? Look up “femme tondue”. Anna’s lucky.
I’m wondering what her voice is going to sound like in 7-8 years, or even 10-15.
I heard her live in Berlin last year, and I thought she sounded better than ever. Of course her voice isn’t fresh and clear as when she was younger, but it’s deeper and more multilayered so to speak. She’s always sounded like she’s also singing low when she’s singing high, and that quality has only become more dominant in recent years.
She also sounds more breathless than she used to in the past, which makes her singing sound more dramatic, more like a matter of life and death. It was so powerful.
Obviously at some point her voice aging will result in an overall decline, and objectively she’s probably past her peak, but I wouldn’t trade her current form with any of her past ones.
Except for the halved income, nothing will change; she has her name which draws opera spectators.
The thing is that even he became a famous name over this past years, and opera houses who desperately need famous names, will continue to hire him. Nothing to do with his voice. Opera goers aren t such experts to judge if he is good or bad; but he is a well known name and that s what matters today
They only hired him as part of a package deal. He never would have had a career if it weren’t for her.
His is not a well-known name. Known only as an appendage to a famous name.
**BREAKING NEWS** INTERPOL have just issued an arrest warrant for A.NETREBKO – the charge is crimes against fashion and good taste.
That look is the epitome of Eurotrash. What a vulgar troglodyte.
I’m free- if no oligarchs- get in their first!