Anna Netrebko

The incomparable Anna Netrebko follows Deutsche Grammophon’s acclaimed, best-selling 2008 audio release of La Bohème.

This DVD is a new production of the Puccini favourite, staged at Salzburg 2012.Tenor Piotr Beczala rocks as Rodolfo, Mimì’s lover. Massimo Cavalletti sings Rodolfo’s friend Marcello with uncommon finesse and beauty of tone. Nino Machaidze is a moving Musetta.

The robust orchestration of this popular opera verges on the ethereal as Mimì’s life slips away. Throughout his reading, conductor Daniele Gatti strikes the perfect balance between sentiment and sentimentality, vigour and fragility, the specter of untimely death and the quick and young it haunts.

The New York Times wrote, “You don’t often hear Mimì sung with such vivid character and sheer charisma.”

The incomparable Anna Netrebko follows Deutsche Grammophon’s acclaimed, best-selling 2008 audio release of La Bohème.

This BD is a new production of the Puccini favourite, staged at Salzburg 2012. Tenor Piotr Beczala rocks as Rodolfo, Mimì’s lover. Massimo Cavalletti sings Rodolfo’s friend Marcello with uncommon finesse and beauty of tone. Nino Machaidze is a moving Musetta.

The robust orchestration of this popular opera verges on the ethereal as Mimì’s life slips away. Throughout his reading, conductor Daniele Gatti strikes the perfect balance between sentiment and sentimentality, vigour and fragility, the specter of untimely death and the quick and young it haunts.

The New York Times wrote, “You don’t often hear Mimì sung with such vivid character and sheer charisma.”

A film by REINER E. MORITZ

Music on television has come in various guises over the last 50 years. It was already part of the programme mix at the very beginning and is still around, more sophisticated than ever, live and event driven and at it’s best reaching millions – at any rate more people than those experiencing music in opera houses, concert halls or other venues. Television has been instrumental in popularizing music, preserving precious moments of music making and helping to create music and performances which would not exist without it.

“When music lovers like you lean back today and enjoy a live broadcast from La Scala in Milan, a “Last Night of the Proms”, a “New Year´s Concert” from Vienna or any other Gala they benefit from enormous technical developments over the last fifty years or so and a breed of practitioners who are as virtuosic in handling today´s audiovisual recording equipment as the artists they sort of immortalize for you. While technology advances content ends to get more popular because of the ratings game. In any event television has played a significant role in popularizing classical music since it started. And think about the value of its archives, unless they have been destroyed by penny pinching executives. Isn´t it wonderful that we can watch the very first images of a regular television service in 1936, a Toscanini performing, a Leonard Bernstein with his knowledge and charisma attracting young people to classical music or a Stravinsky conducting his own “Firebird”? And that we have become used to expressive close-ups, behind the scenes material and cameras used like a “fly on the wall”? Even if staging for the camera is more or less out, we do enjoy every bit of live music on the box which slowly turns into your home cinema. And for us practitioners, television still remains a bit of an adventure.” Reiner E. Moritz

With her sensational role debut at the Vienna State Opera, superstar diva Anna Netrebko displays a performance of rare vocal and dramatic power. The Russian soprano sings the role of the unjustly accused second wife of British King Henry VIII, ‘veering between indignant fury and tender righteousness’ and demonstrating a new level of confidence in her technique with excellent ‘passagework, particularly in trills, and seamless runs even to the lowest notes’ (Opera News).

The performance also stars DG mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, in ‘a fantastic display of bel canto’ (Opera News) as Anna's rival Giovanna Seymour. Ildebrando D’Arcangelo brings his beautifully dark tone to the role of Enrico and young Italian tenor Francesco Meli sings the demanding role of Lord Percy with a ‘youthful virility’ (Agence France Press), promising great things for the future. On the podium Evelino Pidò 'drew playing of unusual precision and refinement...making every note matter' (Financial Times).

A red hot ticket at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010/2011 was Donizetti’s comic gem, Don Pasquale, with Anna Netrebko reviving Norina, the part that made her a star in New York. Opera summed up the simple truth: “. . . everyone adored her”.

John Del Carlo’s impressive singing and acting chops as the Don are given every boost by Otto Schenk’s hilarious staging and James Levine’s witty conducting. Leading this opera for the first time at the Met, the renowned maestro demonstrates that his gifts suit Donizetti as perfectly as Wagner. Mariusz Kwiecień and Matthew Polenzani scintillate as Malatesta and Ernesto.

When Norina slaps Pasquale, the old man sees how deluded he has been to believe that the young beauty loves him. The San Francisco Chronicle paid homage to this turning point thus: “Netrebko captures the moment that gives the opera a heart it otherwise would lack”.

Filmed in November 2010, the DVD features backstage intermission interviews caught during the hubbub of performance.