Anna Netrebko, one of opera’s reigning prima donnas, recalled the skeptical reactions that greeted her decision to make a stab at singing the dark and demanding role of Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s “Macbeth.”
“I never saw so many googly eyes in my life,” she said. “Even those who were close to me and knew me said, ‘No way, no, you’re crazy, you cannot do that,’ ” she said with a laugh. “Of course, it’s crazy. I am not a dramatic soprano.”
Ms. Netrebko’s crazy gamble is paying off. Her Lady Macbeth is causing a sensation at the Metropolitan Opera, winning roars from audiences — on Friday night there was even a “Brava!” in the middle of her sleepwalking scene — and rave reviews. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times that, from her first scene, “you knew the role was hers.” Manuela Hoelterhoff of Bloomberg News called her performance “one of the greatest triumphs in recent Met history.” And James Jorden wrote in The New York Observer that “she delivered what opera buffs call a ‘demented’ performance, one so exciting it propels both artist and audience figuratively to the brink of madness.”
Excerpt: ‘Macbeth’ at the Met
The soprano Anna Netrebko is Lady Macbeth in this Metropolitan Opera production of the Verdi opera.
Video by Metropolitan Opera on Publish Date October 3, 2014.And she has more high-stakes gambles coming. In an interview at the opera house last week, Ms. Netrebko, 43, spoke about her willingness to take risks, her decision to sing more dramatic repertory, and some of the new roles she plans to tackle at the Met, disclosing that she would open its 2017-18 season singing the title role in Bellini’s “Norma” in a new production, and that she would tackle Verdi’s “Aida” the following season.
“It’s scary, but what can you do?” she said of singing Norma, one of the most challenging diva showcases in the operatic repertory, a role associated with singers including Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, Lilli Lehmann and Rosa Ponselle. “You have to try. You just have to try.”
It is all part of Ms. Netrebko’s continuing transition from lighter ingénue parts — the “inas,” she has called them, for the suffix attached to the names of so many of those characters — to darker, more daring roles. In 2016, she plans to sing Elsa in “Lohengrin” in Dresden; bring her acclaimed Leonora, from Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” to the Met for the first time next season; and sing the title part of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” there the following season. A month ago, she sang Richard Strauss’s “Four Last Songs” with Daniel Barenboim in Berlin.
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who has championed Ms. Netrebko’s career and helped make her one of the company’s biggest stars, praised her for the way she has continued to add tougher roles to her repertory while she is “at the top of her game.”
“Her having the range, and courage, to tackle this wide variety of roles is really reminiscent of Callas,” he said.
Ms. Netrebko tries to walk a fine line. Some singers are overly cautious and sing safe roles for so long that by the time they try more difficult fare, they are past their prime. Others delve into punishing roles too soon, wear out their voices and shorten their careers. Ms. Netrebko said that while she had ignored the advice of those who told her “You have to sing Mozart for another 20 years,” she still tries to pace herself when it comes to the more demanding roles.
“No, I’m not careful, but, of course, I’m trying to be smart,” Ms. Netrebko said, explaining that she tries to follow her tough new roles with easier ones that will restore her voice. “I’m not going to sing Lady Macbeth one after another.”
She said that she began exploring different repertory after noticing that her voice was changing, and growing bigger, after she became a mother six years ago. She said that she had agreed to take on Norma after being asked by Antonio Pappano, the music director of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, where she hopes to sing the role first.
“Every soprano dreams to sing that,” she said.
She said that she has been expanding her repertory with the help of her vocal coach, Daniel Sarge, in Vienna, and that she has already cleared two months from her schedule to devote herself to learning Norma. “I know how hard it is,” she said.
She said that the most difficult of her new roles was Leonora in “Trovatore.”
Franz Welser-Möst, the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and, until his surprise resignation last month, of the Vienna State Opera, caught her Leonora this summer at the Salzburg Festival, where he was conducting other works. “There were absolutely stunning moments, when you’d really say, ‘Wow, who was the last one who could sing it that way?’ ” he recalled. “I think she’s a really smart artist who knows when to sing what.”
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There are changes afoot in Ms. Netrebko’s private life as well. Last year, she announced her separation from the singer Erwin Schrott, with whom she had a son, Tiago. This year she announced her engagement to Yusif Eyvazov, a tenor who appeared with her in “Manon Lescaut” at the Rome Opera House. “I found a wonderful man, and so I’m very happy,” she said.
The conductor of that “Manon Lescaut” in Rome was Riccardo Muti, one of the world’s foremost Verdi interpreters; Ms. Netrebko said that she had received some valuable advice on singing Lady Macbeth from him. Some was practical — he warned her that the Act II drinking song, a brindisi, was perhaps toughest on the voice — and some was more general. “He told me a very important thing about ‘Macbeth’: The rhythm and the words are almost more important than the notes,” she recalled. “The rhythm has to be 100 percent there.”
She will next perform in “Macbeth” on Wednesday, and the production will be beamed live to movie theaters around the world on Saturday as part of the Met’s Live in HD series.
Before she became a singer, Ms. Netrebko wanted to be an actress, and when she discusses her coming roles, she speaks almost as much about their personality, and whether they would be a good dramatic fit for her, as she does of their music. It was her idea to play Lady Macbeth as a blonde, and her portrayal makes her less of a witchy character and more of a strong personality with a sexual power over her husband. She confessed to some opening-night jitters at the Met in her first scene, when she appears in a bed, hidden at first by black sheets.
“I was under these black sheets, and I was scared, thinking: “Come on, I’ve got to become Lady now. Just come to me, come into my body, come into my mind,’ ” she recalled of those moments before she emerged from the sheets. “And once I opened this black sheet, I was there.”