“Nabucco” with Anna Netrebko: Nobody sings it like this today. Except one

by time news

2024-10-03 12:04:02

Anna Netrebko made her stage debut in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Nabucco” at the Berlin State Opera. She poses as a woman with a gun and a golden angel in Emma Dante’s production. Netrebko is crazy. The rest of the klimbim.

At least the rapid fire gun had been censored at the last second. Posing as Abigaille, Anna Netrebko advertised on Instagram her debut in a stage role at the Berlin State Opera a few days before the premiere of “Nabucco” – and immediately received a vehement shitstorm.

Once again, the Russians were insensitive to the precarious situation they have found themselves in since the start of the war in Ukraine. However, not posting doesn’t really save the premiere, which is completely useless for Berlin.

Because there’s too much wrong here. In 2000 there was a controversial and brilliant reinterpretation of Hans Neuenfels by the twenty-seven-year-old Verdi at the Deutsche Oper. Of course, he proved that this work, which vibrates with patriotism, crudely assembled and musically moving pieces of air-flesh hung on a dramaturgically thin skeleton, is more than just a dream concert by the prison choir.

In 2013 there was the next new production of Keith Warner’s “Nabucco” on Bismarckstrasse, this time superficially poor and still on stage. This was once again effortlessly undermined by the German debut of director Emma Dante, listed as a rebel in Italy.

Only the front part of the stage is used. People usually stand on it and row with their arms. In between, women approved for the femizit dance, Jewish brides who transform into Babylonian attackers, white welfare priests, a golden ghost in a crown-like cage and knights with flowerpot-shaped helmets.

Abigaille poses as a woman with a gun, the understudy Carmen, Erzgebirge Rauschgoldengel and Dunja Rajter in black lace. His father Nabucco (who isn’t his father at all) plays the retired motocross veteran, the Jewish high priest Zechariah looks like a Brahmin with his rhinestones on his forehead.

Images without history

The highly ordered choir is crammed for three acts into a stairway construction, temporarily invisible through the Western Wall, which is modeled on the ugly but popular, because scaleable, outdoor sculpture “The Vessel” in New York City’s new neighborhood of Hudson Yards. Hanging from flower umbrellas, it will later recall the hanging gardens of Semiramide. And all that remains is a helplessly organized gimmick.

Which, of course, has an obscene flavor when Verdi’s four-act, battle-crazed, pounding and revenge-hungry opera, decorated here only superficially, is constantly handled with images of today’s outside world that have no history and remain trapped. the air without any causality.

Of course, that was another premiere that the new director Elisabeth Sobotka can do nothing about, it was expected for a long time. By then Anna Netrebko would also make her debut in the role of Abigaille in Vienna, and another premiere was scheduled for the Met in New York. One has fallen victim to Corona, the Met is no longer suffering, they are fighting in court over lost wages and damages.

In 2023, the May Festival in Wiesbaden hosted the unexpectedly first Netrebko Abigaille – in concert, accompanied by shouts of Ukrainian war opponents outside and boos inside. Protesters in Berlin only announced their arrival later, but Anna Netrebko’s portrayal of the Babylonian king’s unsympathetic daughter, who turns out to be a humble slave with a huge hunger for power, snatches the crown from her surrogate father temporarily crazy and poisons himself as a good ending for others, they have grown enormously.

With the same willingness to take risks, nerves and skill, no one today sings this most difficult of all Verdi female roles, with enormous leaps of intervals, strong and high tones, an extreme dynamic scale and twisted coloratura with the same quality as Netrebko . If you like its increasingly dark, powerful, sometimes vulgar chest register, the top notes that are isolated from it and take a long time.

He creates his great and crazy aria “Anch’io discuso un giorno” in a precise and concentrated way, becoming a model of confidently mastered vocal technique, but also presented in a somewhat isolated concert style; However, Netrebko only plays for himself; fits perfectly into this hybrid role.

Luca Salsi also sings Nabucco better than usual, not only as the owner of a well-rounded bronze baritone, but this time also as an emphatic designer. Proven and variable, Marina Prudenskaya is a warm and vulnerable Fenena. Mika Karas warms up well as does Zaccaria.

Replacing Daniel Barenboim in the Staatskapelle is Bertrand de Billy. At the beginning he directs in a dancing, nervous way, with transparent delicacy, which as he progresses becomes more and more clumsy, noisy, coarse and decidedly boring. Of course it fits this incomplete and annoying evening, in which the new general musical director Christian Thielemann hopefully also carefully participated.

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