Composer: Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Charles François Gounod, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jacques Offenbach, Sergei Prokofiev, Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini, Giuseppe Verdi
Performer: Anna Netrebko, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Mariusz Kwiecien, Simone Alaimo, Juan Diego Florez, Nancy Fabiola Herrera, Eric Halfvarson, Roberto Alagna, Ildar Abdrazakov, Michael Myers, Cecilia Brauer, Joseph Calleja, Piotr Beczala, Gerald Finley
Orchestra: Metropolitan Opera
Conductor: Patrick Summers, Valery Gergiev, Sylvain Cambreling, Maurizio Benini, Asher Fisch, Plácido Domingo, Marco Armiliato, James Levine
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalogue: 4779903
Release: 2011
Size: 291 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Bellini: I Puritani / Act II
01. Qui la voce sua soave
Prokofiev: War and Peace, Op. 91
02. Ya ne budu … Duet: Kak solntze za garoi
Mozart: Don Giovanni, ossia Il dissoluto punito, K. 527 / Act II
03. “Vedrai, carino”
Donizetti: Don Pasquale / Act III
04. “Senz’andar lungi…La morale in tutto questo”
Verdi: Rigoletto / Act III
05. “Ah, più non ragiono!…”
Gounod: Roméo et Juliette / Act IV
06. Nuit d’hymnénée!
07. “Dieu! quel frisson” / “Amour, ranime mon courage”
Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor / Act III
08. “Il dolce suono” – “Ardon gl’incensi”
Offenbach: Les Contes d’Hoffmann / Act III
09. “Pourtant, ô ma fiancée” … “C’est une chanson d’amour”
Puccini: La Bohème / Act III
10. “Donde lieta uscì”
Puccini: La Bohème / Act I
11. “O soave fanciulla”
The forthcoming season marks the 10th anniversary of Anna Netrebko’s debut with the Metropolitan Opera, New York. The new album celebrates this milestone by bringing together her greatest MET moments throughout the past 10 seasons – performances never before issued on record and most never commercially released on any format.
Anna Netrebko’s first operatic album sold more than 300,000 units, the second, Sempre libera, more than 400,000, while her live recording of Verdi’s La Traviata has sold in excess of 350,000 on CD alone. This new album, capturing the thrill of her greatest performances on one of the world’s most iconic stages, will be a major event for hundreds of thousands of fans who have followed her career in the opera house, on radio, on CD, on DVD and in cinemas worldwide.
Over the past decade, The Met has played host to many of the Russian soprano’s greatest triumphs, from Prokofiev’s War and Peace in 2002 to her most recent appearance, in 2010, as Adina in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. The album also includes virtuoso arias from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Bellini’s I Puritani, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Puccini’s La Bohème.
The selections – including performances with tenors Roberto Alagna, Joseph Calleja and Juan Diego Flórez – demonstrate Anna Netrebko’s remarkable vocal range and dramatic imagination. All recorded live, they are infused with her unique vocal magnetism and irresistible on-stage charisma.
It would be happy news for opera fans if this release indicated the beginning a trend for the Metropolitan Opera: releasing albums of excerpts of operas from its vast archive that showcase the work of individual singers. Recitals of operatic arias and scenes recorded in the studio are a dime a dozen (and for a rising star, a practically obligatory rite of passage). The results can easily sound sterile and formulaic; the same repertoire for each voice type gets endlessly recycled, the supporting singers are seldom of the highest quality, and the orchestral accompaniment is a wild card, sometimes stellar and sometimes barely adequate. A series of releases from the Met would guarantee a high quality of orchestral and choral support, excellent soloists in the extended scenes and ensemble pieces, and the dynamic charge of live performance that’s rarely captured in the studio. This release is all of those things, besides being a glowing testimony to Netrebko’s artistry; her immersion in her roles and easy dramatic flair for both comedy and tragedy, the breadth of the repertoire in which she excels, and her remarkable voice: velvety, lustrous, beguiling.
This collection was released in celebration of the tenth anniversary of Netrebko’s Met debut in 2002 as Natasha in Prokofiev’s War and Peace, and includes a rhapsodic scene (with Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Ekaterina Semenchuk) from that production. Every track is fully satisfying. The Mad Scene from Lucia is chilling in Netrebko’s haunted and haunting performance. The two scenes from Roméo et Juliette are high points. There’s real chemistry between Netrebko and Roberto Alagna, and their duet, “Huit d’hyménée,” is vocally gorgeous and saturated with sensuality. The delightful trio from Don Pasquale, which also features Juan Diego Flórez and Mariusz Kwiecien, offers ample evidence of the performers’ sly humor. This is a release that will be indispensible for Netrebko’s fans. There is some variability in the sound quality and ambience between tracks, but its impact is negligible because it’s never less than very fine.