Anna Netrebko


Anna Yuryevna Netrebko is a Russian-Austrian operatic soprano. Discovered and promoted by Valery Gergiev, she began her career at the Mariinsky Theatre, collaborating with the conductor in the theater and performances elsewhere. She was noticed globally after playing Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the 2002 Salzburg Festival. She had been known for her rendition of lyric and coloratura soprano roles, most notably Donna Anna and Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, and proceeded into heavier 19th-century romantic roles, such as Leonora in Il trovatore and the role of Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. Since 2016, she has turned her focus to Verismo repertoire.
She has received multiple awards and honors and has substantial discography made primarily under Deutsche Grammophon.
She holds dual Russian and Austrian citizenship and resides in Vienna and New York City.

Early life and training

Netrebko was born in Krasnodar, in a family of Kuban Cossack background. While a student at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Netrebko worked as a janitor at Saint Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre. Later when she auditioned for the theatre, conductor Valery Gergiev, recognizing her from her prior work, subsequently became her vocal mentor. She won first prize at the 1993 International Glinka Vocalists Competition and third prize at the 1996 International Rimsky-Korsakov Young Opera Singers Competition.

Career

1990s

Under Gergiev's guidance, in 1994, Netrebko made her operatic stage debut at the Mariinsky at age 22 as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro despite initially being billed as Barbarina. In the same year, she also performed as the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute with the Riga Independent Opera Avangarda Akadēmija under conductor David Milnes. She subsequently became associated with the Mariinsky Theatre, portraying roles including Lyudmila in Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila, Pamina in The Magic Flute, Rosina in The Barber of Seville, a flower maiden in Parsifal, and Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor. Her collaboration with Gergiev also extended to opera and concert performances at other venues, including Mussorgsky's The Nursery at The Proms, Carmen at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Betrothal in a Monastery at his Mikkeli Music Festival, Boris Godunov at the Ravenna Festival, The Love for Three Oranges at the Concertgebouw.
In autumn 1995, Netrebko made her American debut as Lyudmila at the San Francisco Opera. Following this successful performance, she was enrolled in the Merola Opera Program the next year and then became a frequent guest singer in San Francisco, performing roles including Adina in L'elisir d'amore, Louisa in Betrothal in a Monastery, Ilia in Idomeneo, Musetta in La bohème, Marfa in The Tsar's Bride, Zerlina in Don Giovanni. In 1998, she performed as Lyudmila when the Mariinsky production of the opera was presented at the Metropolitan Opera, and debuted at the Salzburg Festival in Parsifal conducted by Gergiev. She debuted in the role of Violetta in Verdi's La traviata in the same year at the Mariinsky Theatre, and debuted as Amina in La sonnambula the following year. In October 1999, Netrebko performed Gilda in Rigoletto at the Washington National Opera.

2000s

In 2002, Netrebko made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera company as Natasha in the Met premiere of Prokofiev's War and Peace. In the same year, she sang her first Donna Anna at the Salzburg Festival's production of Don Giovanni, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
In 2003, Netrebko performed as Violetta in Verdi's La traviata in Munich, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Los Angeles Opera, and Donna Anna at the Covent Garden Royal Opera House. Her second album, Sempre Libera, was released the following year. She later appeared as Violetta in La traviata at the Salzburg Festival, conducted by Carlo Rizzi and in 2008 she performed the same role at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden to triumphant acclaim on the opening night, opposite Jonas Kaufmann and Dmitri Hvorostovsky in performances conducted by Maurizio Benini. However, she cancelled three subsequent performances due to suffering a bronchial condition. This was the second time she had cancelled her performances at the Royal Opera House, having withdrawn from some performances of Don Giovanni the previous summer due to illness.
She sang Elvira in I puritani at the Metropolitan Opera in January 2007, and on 30 May 2007, Netrebko made her Carnegie Hall debut with Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the Orchestra of St. Luke's, which was originally scheduled on 2 March 2006 but she postponed due to not feeling artistically ready. She appeared at the Last Night of the Proms on 8 September of that year where she performed excerpts from La sonnambula and Giuditta, and the Lied Morgen! by Richard Strauss with Joshua Bell. In the fall of 2007 she reprised her role as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette at the Metropolitan Opera.
In May 2008, she made her Paris Opera debut in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Opéra Bastille, with Joyce DiDonato as Romeo. In her first performance after her maternity leave, Netrebko sang Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor when it opened at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg on 14 January 2009, in a production from the Scottish Opera led by John Doyle. She then sang the same role in January and February 2009 at the Metropolitan Opera. Netrebko appeared as Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Royal Opera House in Spring 2009, and as Violetta in La traviata in June 2009 at the San Francisco Opera.

2010s

In October and November 2010, she sang the role of Norina in Don Pasquale at New York's Metropolitan Opera House under conductor James Levine. The matinee performance on 13 November was broadcast nationwide by PBS. On 2 April 2011, she sang the title role of Gaetano Donizetti's Anna Bolena at the Vienna State Opera for a sold-out premiere there, and the repeat performance on 5 April 2011 was broadcast live to cinemas around the world. On 7 December 2011, she opened the new season at La Scala in Milan, making her house debut, as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. She has the distinction of being invited to appear in three consecutive opening night new productions at the Metropolitan Opera: Anna Bolena in 2011, L'elisir d'amore in 2012, and Eugene Onegin in 2013. Her performance as Lady Macbeth in the Metropolitan's 2014 fall season's production of Macbeth, a revival of Adrian Noble's 2007 production, drew critical praise and demonstrated her voice is still expanding in range and volume. She continued her expansion into heavier Verdi roles at the Met the following year, singing the role of Leonora in Il trovatore to acclaim from both critics and audiences.
In December 2014, she gave a ₽1,000,000 cheque to Oleg Tsaryov saying she was donating to the Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, and posed alongside Tsarov with a flag of Novorossiya, a self-proclaimed confederation in Ukraine. Tsarov is one of the individuals sanctioned by the European Union for his role in the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine. Netrebko said in a statement "I want to make clear, however, that this donation is not a political act".
In April 2016, Netrebko announced her withdrawal from productions of Bellini's Norma at the Royal Opera House's 2016/17 season and the Metropolitan Opera's 2017/18 season due to the change in her voice. The vacancies were filled respectively by Sonya Yoncheva and Sondra Radvanovsky.
She made several role debuts in 2017, including the title role of Adriana Lecouvreur at Mariinsky Theatre in June, the title role of Aida at Salzburg Festival in August, and Maddalena in Andrea Chénier at La Scala in December. In 2018, she debuted as Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in April and performed at the Summer Night Concert Schönbrunn on 31 May. After the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, she debuted in Naples as Floria Tosca in Tosca, with her husband and Ludovic Tezier.

Guest appearances

Netrebko made a cameo appearance as herself in the 2004 film .
She was invited as a guest performer in the 2004, 2007, and 2019 Vienna Opera Ball.
In December 2007 Netrebko was invited to honor Martin Scorsese at the 30th Annual Kennedy Center Honors, performing the aria "O mio babbino caro".
She participated in the gala concert inaugurating the Mariinsky Theatre Second Stage on 2 May 2013. She was invited to perform the Olympic Anthem, in Russian, at the 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony.
She performed in both gala concerts at the Red Square on 13 June and at the Bolshoi Theatre on 14 July, respectively commemorating the opening and closing of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. On 8 September 2018 she took part in the inauguration gala concert of Zaryadye Concert Hall in Moscow, which was streamed on Medici.tv. She was featured in the opening ceremony of 2019 European Games in Minsk on 21 June and inaugurated the first concert season of the Congress Hall at the Yekaterinburg Expo on 30 August 2019.

Other activities

Netrebko serves as an honorary director of the Russian Children's Welfare Society and has featured in several editions of "Petroushka Ball", the major fund raiser of the charity. In 2007, she was announced to be an ambassador for SOS Children's Villages in Austria, and a sponsor for the Tomilino village in Russia. In May 2012, she and her then-partner Erwin Schrott jointly founded the charitable foundation "Anna Netrebko and Erwin Schrott 4 Kids", aiming to promote education, art, culture and youth welfare.
She is an ambassador of Chopard, having attended several of its occasions and publicly worn its designs.

Personal life

In March 2006, Netrebko applied to become an Austrian citizen, receiving her citizenship in late July. According to an interview in the Austrian weekly news, she will live in Vienna and Salzburg. Netrebko cites the cumbersome and humiliating process of obtaining visas as a Russian citizen for her many performances abroad as the main reason for obtaining Austrian citizenship.
Netrebko started a relationship with Italian bass-baritone Simone Alberghini when they met each other during performances of Rigoletto at the Washington National Opera in 1999. She announced their engagement but did not consider marrying due to a busy schedule. In May 2007 their relationship was confirmed as ended.
In December 2007 Netrebko became engaged to Uruguayan bass-baritone Erwin Schrott, whom she first met during a collaboration in 2003. In April 2008, she announced their marriage, but their wedding never in fact took place. Their son, Tiago Aruã, was born on 5 September 2008 in Vienna. On 25 November 2013, the couple announced their separation, after several months of largely separate lives. Tiago, who is mildly autistic, lives exclusively with her.
In February 2014, during rehearsals for a staging of Manon Lescaut in Rome, Netrebko began a relationship with Azerbaijani tenor, her co-star in that opera. Five months later, the couple announced their engagement. They married on 29 December 2015, at the Palais Coburg in Vienna with 180 guests in attendance, including Plácido Domingo. Netrebko has an apartment in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson River.
Netrebko is a close friend of Austrian fashion designer Irina Vitjaz, and has worn several of her designs.

Awards and recognition

In 2004, Netrebko was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation.
Time magazine placed her on its Time 100 list in 2007. She won the 2007 Singer of the Year and the 2008 Female Artist of Year in the Classical Brit Awards. She was identified by the journal Musical America as "a genuine superstar for the 21st century" and was named Musician of the Year for 2008. In February 2008, she was named People's Artist of Russia. She was included in the list of Young Global Leaders 2010 issued by World Economic Forum. Netrebko was one of the recipients of Leading Ladies Award 2012 awarded by Madonna magazine. She received another Leading Ladies Award in the category of Culture in 2016. She was named one of the Beautiful People in 2013 by Paper. She was presented an Opera News Award in April 2016.
Netrebko won the "Female Singer of the Year" in the 2014 and 2016 Echo Klassik Award. In February 2017, the Austrian government named her Kammersängerin. She won the Best Female Singer in the 2017 International Opera Awards. Asteroid 31104 Annanetrebko was named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 31 January 2018. She was awarded the "World Star" of the BraVo International Professional Music Awards 2018. In May 2018, she received the Order of Friendship from the Azerbaijani president. On 26 October 2018, the Metropolitan Opera Guild honored her on its annual luncheon. In 2020 she was awarded the Swedish Polar Music Prize and the Victoire d'honneur in the Victoires de la musique classique.

Discography

Complete opera

Video

Audio

Recital discs, concerts and compilations

CDs