2023-05-08 11:52:45
Wis it worth it? Fine, Anna Netrebko has finally made her role debut as Abigaille in Verdi’s Nabucco. For two concert performances (for which she occasionally consulted the sheet music), she is said to receive a mid-five-figure amount each. And Uwe Eric Laufenberg, the outgoing artistic director of the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden, has his – albeit controversial – world star in the house. She has already been booked again for two scenic “Turandots” for the upcoming May Festival.
But Netrebko will continue to be and will remain associated with such images: women who have fled Ukraine in national dress chanting “Shame” and “Go, Netrebko” on the green in front of the theater colonnade, waving flags and holding up placards with pictures of the burned corpses and dead children can be seen.
Posters reading: “No applause for Putin’s propaganda Netrebko”, “Netrebko – agent of the evil empire”, “Art smells of our blood! #NoNetrebko”. There are also speeches by MEPs and the Ukrainian Consul General, which are difficult to understand because of the poor sound system. Around 25 musicians from the Hessian State Orchestra in tails and evening gowns, who have to go straight into the Verdi ditch, also express their solidarity outside with the Ukrainian national anthem.
Opposite, separated from the demonstrators by police officers, the well-dressed State Theater visitors stand under the pillars in front of the “Fürst Metternich” champagne car, others sit in deck chairs, sipping spritzer and watching the peaceful but loud spectacle.
They don’t want to appear completely lacking in empathy, but they insist on their dearly bought enjoyment of art. And between them stands the cursing director who pretends to be uncomprehending. The protest is not as big as announced: there are 200 or 300 people, but they are there.
On the third try
It had been high before. Of course, Uwe Eric Laufenberg knew what he was doing. Hiring a Russian artist sanctioned by Ukraine (whether rightly so or not) as the figurehead and frontwoman of festivals that he dedicated to political prisoners worldwide and at which Ukrainian ensembles were also supposed to perform should make headlines.
The Ukrainians canceled immediately. The city of Wiesbaden and the Hessian state government, which finances the festival, blamed, distanced themselves and canceled all official events. And of all things, during a panel discussion about freedom of expression, the theater grande reprimanded local journalists, with whom he is in a constant feud, and threatened to be banned from the hall.
Actually, Anna Netrebko was supposed to make her “Nabucco” debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera in May 2020. It was canceled because of the pandemic. A second attempt should have taken place in November 2021 at the Vienna State Opera, which she then canceled herself – “because of an urgent operation on the shoulder”. Her last new role was Elisabeth de Valois in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater in autumn 2020, where she is no longer allowed to appear. But the Russian with an Austrian passport is also in many places in the West Persona non grataeven if they will sing at the season opening of La Scala in Milan on December 7th.
Audibly undertested
So now “Nabucco” in Wiesbaden, where Anna Netrebko has of course never been, at a C festival, next to a shockingly sung Serbian baritone, a decent Korean bass, a histrionic Romanian tenor and two Russians in small roles. Michael Güttler, once Valery Gergiev’s assistant, is at the podium with a tight but relaxed beat.
Netrebko – on Instagram she just announced her visit to the local Dostoyevsky bust – comes in as a golden girl in a pleated wallawalla with a corresponding headdress. She looks defiantly ready to attack the audience, clenches her raised fist several times. Soon she will greedily reach for the crown, Daddy’s spoiled Babylonian princess, who in the end – now she’s wearing a black, slightly jingling glittery dress – has nothing left and dies.
Abigaille is one of the killer roles in opera. Verdi’s companion Giuseppe Giuseppina Strepponi ruined her voice with it. The Netrebko ords its way clumsily through the intricate interval leaps, screams out its top notes in isolation and not always intonation-safe.
It is audibly underrehearsed, slowly recovering, but remains cold, unapproachable, even when clear boos are mixed in with the applause after the first trio – there are a few activists in the hall. In the course of the evening she builds up to a decent, admittedly vulgar role debut, but even her last, finally subtly fragile, sing phrases leave you cold. Even if the audience applauds his Netrebko gig: There were only injuries on this strange evening at the opera.
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