WASHINGTON, July 16 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian native and janitor-turned-superstar on the world opera stage has a new starring role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York this fall and next month plans to release her first recording in five years.
Anna Netrebko will release “Verdi” on August 9, which she recorded with Italy’s Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Torino. Its release coincides with the 200th birth date of the Italian opera composer Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi, and will feature music from some of his operas including “Macbeth,” “Giovanna D’Arco,” and “I vespri siciliani.”
Netrebko was born in 1971 in Krasnodar and studied vocal performance at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and worked for two years as a janitor at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, and later won a vocal competition in Moscow that led to an audition before star Russian conductor Valery Gergiev.
She rose to prominence for her performances in Russian operatic roles throughout the 1990s and 2000s. A regular performer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in September, she will kick off the Met’s fall season singing Tatiana in a new production by Debora Warner under Gergiev’s baton .
Netrebko told RIA Novosti before her last performance in Vienna in April that she had feared the “huge responsibility” of playing the iconic heroine of the most famous poetic work by Alexander Pushkin.
“Of course, I have known this opera since my childhood. I read Pushkin – that’s obvious; it's in our blood, our brains, our souls. But I never thought that I would sing this opera,” she said. “I can't remember a time when I was as nervous as before my first Tatiana. I was shaking all over.”
