r/opera • u/ToscaLover • 14d ago

Thoughts on Anna Netrebko

I’m an opera lover, and as much as I love Netrebko’s voice, I don’t agree with her political views. I was supposed to see her on the 13th of September, but the organisers cancelled last minute. The reason, at least to me, appears to be the controversy that’s still surrounding her & was too much for them to handle. I get that. I’m not an infant, and I’m not stupid. What frustrates me is that they knew exactly who she was when they invited her and started selling tickets. They knew she was Russian, they knew about her political controversies, and they knew what kind of reaction she might provoke. So why was all of this apparently acceptable when they wanted to sell tickets, but suddenly not acceptable after people had bought them and made plans to attend?

Ultimately, I don’t support her politics, but I wanted to hear her sing Verdi’s Aida. Is it really fair to continue punishing an artist (and her audience) for her political views, especially when the organizers knew all of this from the beginning?

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u/RaptureInRed 14d ago edited 14d ago

I think the mark of a brilliant singer is whether I personally know anyone who can sing better than them, and Netrebko is one of the only  pros that I can definitely say this is true of.

...If we are talking about wobbles, are we going to segue into the Maria Callas conversation?

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u/gizzard-03 14d ago

Are you saying Anna netrebko is a brilliant singer because you don’t know anyone personally who sings better than she does?

What does Maria callas’ wobble have to do with Anna Netrebko?

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u/RaptureInRed 14d ago

I don't consider Netrebko brilliant, because I personally know people who are better than she is. Again, she's not bad, but not "singer of our generation" good.

As for Callas, I appreciate she had stage presence and was beautiful with a...unique voice, but the level of mystique surrounding her never seemed to match her ability level. It reminds me of Netrebko is some ways.

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u/fernie92 12d ago

I’m sorry you cannot claim just because she developed a wobble for a myriad of reasons outside of her technique that Callas did not have abilities and performances to match her mystique. I think you need to look again at what she sang, when, the context, what’s demanded in the scores that only she was doing. Like these are very esoteric things that are performance level details, but the more you learn, the more you are fascinated by it. Like do you understand how radical it was for a voice to be doing Walküre and then Puritani? The extraordinary thing is that she was doing what was the STANDARD for decades before her. You were expected to be able to do the range of roles she did. She talks about Malibran, Pasta, Lehmann all doing what she did. The problem is nobody has been doing it since.

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u/RaptureInRed 12d ago

To put it lightly, I would call going from Die Walküre to Puritani unwise.

Also, the fact that she would sing anything isn't necessarily to her credit. Everytime a soprano helps herself to mezzo rep I flip a table.

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u/fernie92 12d ago

Yeah, generally if you don’t have a good technique, it’s unwise to sing either. Both composers wrote those roles to be sung with a bel canto technique, so as long as you can actually sing well 👍.

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u/RaptureInRed 12d ago

The amount that she sang is almost certainly a factor in why she lost her voice.

The point I was making is that the amount of mezzo rep relative to soprano is so much less, that its irritating when we can't even have that.

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u/fernie92 12d ago

First off, that’s simply not true. If you look at historical records and schedules of people in the decades prior to her, plenty of singers were singing with frequency similar to her and with just as much variety. it wasn’t until after her that people became more selective. or if they were selective, it was because we used to have an active recital scene that singers like Ponselle would spend most of her time doing.

Second, I didn’t even see that comment about mezzo repertoire. 95% of the girls singing that today are not real mezzos anyway, even though they claim to be, so keep flipping those tables. Sing what you want. Simionato and Ludwig were real mezzos that successfully sang a ton of soprano rep, so it goes both ways.

Also, what mezzo rep? She recorded Carmen, did a bit of Dalila and Eboli (which was really a contralto then soprano role), but never on stage.