Anna Netrebko Sings Her First U.S. Performances as Violetta in La Traviata

By -

She Returns to San Francisco Opera June 13

Feature Film Version of La Bohème, starring Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón, Comes to Theaters Across America in September

On June 13, Anna Netrebko returns to San Francisco Opera – where she made her US debut in 1995 in Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila – to sing her first U.S. performances as Violetta Valery in Verdi’s La traviata. Maestro Donald Runnicles, a longtime colleague of Netrebko’s, conducts in his final production as Music Director of the San Francisco Opera. It has been five years since the Russian soprano last performed with the company, where she was once a young artist in the Merola Opera Program. Opera fans will recall her portrayal of the Verdi heroine in the internationally acclaimed 2005 Salzburg Festival production by Willy Decker, which is available on DVD and on CD in both highlights and full-length versions (the latter of which received a Grammy nomination in 2006). San Francisco Opera's Marta Domingo production of La traviata starring Anna Netrebko opens on Saturday, June 13, 2009, with further performances on June 16, 19, 25, and 28.

Netrebko next comes to the US in December for a new Bartlett Sher production of Les contes d'Hoffmann at the Metropolitan Opera; those not able to wait until then for their Netrebko fix will be rewarded in September when a feature film of Puccini’s La bohème, starring the Russian soprano and tenor Rolando Villazón, is released in theaters in select markets across America. The movie is directed by Oscar- and Emmy-nominated director Robert Dornhelm and was filmed in early 2008 in Vienna.

The theatrical trailer for La bohème can be seen at http://www.laboheme-derfilm.de/.

According to Emerging Pictures, the film’s distributor in the U.S., La bohème is scheduled to be shown in theaters in select cities on September 23 and 24. Deutsche Grammophon will release a highlights version of Anna Netrebko’s acclaimed recording of the Puccini opera to coincide with the film’s screenings. The full-length version of the recording, which was released in the U.S. last fall, is used as the movie’s soundtrack.

The Times, in its review of Netrebko’s full-length recording of La bohème, asserts, “It is succulently dramatic – a tribute … to the stars’ power.” The San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “[Villazón] sounds relaxed and lyrical as the young poet. His high notes in the climaxes are vibrant and attacked cleanly . . . Netrebko, too, is in excellent voice, her gleaming soprano filling out Mimi’s wistful phrases with grace and sensitivity.”
More details regarding the film’s release will be announced in the coming weeks. Updates regarding the exact schedules and locations, as well as a list of participating venues, will be posted at operaincinema.com.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

The Art of String Quartets by Brian Ferneyhough

By -
Image
When an artist sets paint to canvas, there are brush strokes used for different effects. Sometimes those strokes are subtle, imperceptible; they produce works of art like the Mona Lisa . Other times the very obvious nature of the stroke is the art, as in works by Van Gogh. With some composers of music, the notes on the page are their craft. How those notes translate into an aural experience is what defines some composers as great artists. Brian Ferneyhough has a masterful command of the techniques of putting notes on the page. These techniques are sometimes so subtle, even though written in black and white, they escape detection. Some of what he attempts with his music is just that, to escape detection, to bury the framework, diverting the ear away from the structure, so only the music is heard . The subtlety is so fine it is almost imperceptible. Even though he studied at several institutions, he is considered self-taught, studying scores from Boule
Read more