Netrebko will get to celebrate Maria Callas
NewsShut out of major western venues over her former support for Ukraine separatists, the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko has been thrown a Callas centenary lifeline by the Grand Thatre Shanghai.
She will mark Maria Callas’ 100th birthday with a triple recital featuring the work of Russian composers on October 6-8.
Callas was not fond of Russian rep.
What a typical Donna Anna outrage.
To my knowedge, Callas was not only “not fond of Russian rep” but never performed or recorded anything in Russian at all.
The audacity of performing Russian songs at a celebration of La Divina’s centenary is as absurd as Nana Mouskouri singing the best of Mikis Theodorakis at the anniversaries of Glinka or Borodin.
At least the well-heeled Shanghainese will be spared the embarrassment of hearing the Krasnodar crooner wailing “Vissi soldi, vissi per Putin”.
Poor Maria. Leave her alone Netrebko.
Why wait for a lifeline from the West knowing it’ll break when you can pivot towards the East? Isn’t multi-polarity grand? I can think of no one better to celebrate the Callas centenary than the 2nd Russian Callas, Anna Yuryevna, since Slava’s wife, of blessed memory, is no longer among us.
Anna Netrebko has been performing in 2023-2024 opera’s diverse productions/ versions/ adaptations:
Aida (2023): Vienna, Verona.
Macbeth (2023): la Scala, Berlin
Il Trovatore (2023): Buenos Aires-Theatro Colon
Manon Lescaut (2023): Vienna
Don Carlo (2023): la Scala
Traviatta (2023): Verona, Berlin
Turandot (2024): Wiesbaden, la Scala
Adriana Lecouvreur (2024): Paris
La Gioconda (2024): Saltzburg, San Carlo
None of which she has the voice for.
Did she ever? Not from what I can tell. Arguably one of the most over-rated sopranos of the last 2 decades.
Gergiev will be there as well. They will get on quite well …
Also, will be there: Bavarian State Opera Hous, American Ballet Theater, La Scala Opera House Ballet,Tenor Juan Diego Florez, Mezzo-Soprano Joyce DiDonato, Dutch National Chamber Choir,…etc
Only because you are careful to be precise in the details and only provide accurate details:
1. Teatro San Carlo Callasian celebrations:
Anna Netrebko’s recital opened the Callasian celebrations and 2022-2023 Concert Season (8 October 2022).
Anna Netrebko’s recital will close the celebrations in honor of Maria Callas (13 October 2023).
Quotes from ” The Musical Bee” (https://www.apemusicale.it)
“A triumph, ovations, endless applause from a theater packed and populated by faces of joyful and happy spectators.”
2. Also:
She has been performing only in 2003 all over the world in over more than 22 different venues, including 18 different venues in Europe: Germany (4 ), Italy (4), France(2), Austria (3),…e.t.c
The first paragraph of this post is misleading, as others have pointed out: Netrebko has not been “shut out of major western venues”, though I’m glad to see she is suing the Met for its disreputable behaviour towards her. I wish I could say that the sustained vendetta against her carried out on this blog was surprising, but sadly it’s not.
Point is she SHOULD BE shut out of all non-Russian venues, her not being so a perfect testimony to these other venue’s moral cowardice.
Every American artist should be banned then from all non American venues from the Vietnam war on wards. America has made millions of people suffer and die with its wars, yet the rest of the world never treated any american differently because of that.
And the downvotes don’t surprise me either – not here. If you poke a wasps’ nest, out come the wasps.
I fail to see the connection.