Anna Netrebko

Anna Netrebko (born September 18, 1971, Krasnodar, Russia, U.S.S.R.) is a Russian Austrian operatic soprano known for her dark lustrous voice, her compelling dramatic characterizations, and her alluring stage presence.

Netrebko’s father was a geologist and her mother a communications engineer. As a child, she briefly studied piano and sang in a chorus, and in high school she sang in a traveling musical troupe. When she was 16 years old, she moved to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the hope of becoming an actress. Discouraged by the intense competition, she decided to pursue an operatic career, studying at a musical college for two years and then entering the St. Petersburg State Conservatory (then the Leningrad Conservatory) in 1990. While a student at the conservatory, she scrubbed floors at St. Petersburg’s famed Mariinsky Theatre, a job that entitled her to watch rehearsals of operas and ballets for free. After winning first prize in Russia’s prestigious Mikhail Glinka vocal competition in 1993, Netrebko auditioned successfully for a supporting role in the Mariinsky Opera’s 1994 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (1786; “The Marriage of Figaro”). Despite her relative youth (she was 22 years old) and inexperience, the Mariinsky’s director, Valery Gergiev, soon gave her the opera’s leading role, Susanna. Gergiev thereafter acted as her mentor and was one of her strongest supporters among professional musicians. In 1995 he cast her in the title role (Lyudmila) in a San Francisco Opera production of Glinka’s Russlan and Lyudmila (1842), marking Netrebko’s United States debut. She subsequently sang frequently with the San Francisco Opera, primarily in Russian and Italian roles.

Netrebko sang the role of Natasha in Sergey Prokofiev’s War and Peace (1942) in her debut at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden in 2000 and in her debut at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera two years later. Her performances at the Salzburg Festival (as Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni [1787]) and at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera (as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata [1853]) in 2002–03 were hailed as triumphs, as was her debut with the Los Angeles Opera (in the title role of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor [1835]) in 2003. Her reprise of Violetta at the 2005 Salzburg Festival was an even greater success. By that time she had become an opera star of the first rank, with large numbers of intensely devoted fans (especially in Europe), including people who did not regularly listen to operatic music.

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In 2008 she debuted at the Paris Opéra as Giulietta in Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830). After withdrawing temporarily from the stage to give birth to a son later that year (the child’s father was the Uruguayan bass-baritone Erwin Schrott), she resumed a busy schedule of mostly European and American appearances, including those at the Zürich Opera (2009), the San Francisco Opera (2009), the Berlin State Opera (2010), La Scala (2011), and Royal Albert Hall (2012), in addition to regular performances at Salzburg and the Metropolitan Opera. She made her long-awaited debut at Lyric Opera of Chicago (as Mimi in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème [1896]) in 2013. Netrebko took on weightier roles in 2014 when she triumphantly debuted as Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s Macbeth (1847) at the Bavarian State Opera and as Leonora in his Il trovatore (1853) at the Salzburg Festival. That same year, while performing in a production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (1893) at the Rome Opera, Netrebko met Azerbaijani tenor Yusif Eyvazov. The two married in 2015 and subsequently performed together on many occasions.

Although Netrebko withdrew from productions of Bellini’s Norma (1831) in 2016, citing changes in her voice, she continued to explore more dramatic repertory. She had a string of debuts in 2017, including the role of Elsa in Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin (1850) at the Semperoper Dresden, Germany; Maddalena in Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier (1896) at La Scala; and the title roles in Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur (1902) at the Mariinsky Theatre and Verdi’s Aida (1871) at the Salzburg Festival. Other debuts included the leads in Puccini’s Tosca (1900) at the Metropolitan Opera (2018) and Turandot (1926) at the Bavarian State Opera (2020). Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Netrebko, who was a supporter of Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, was urged to speak out against him and the war. She canceled forthcoming performances and took to social media to condemn the incursion. Nonetheless, the Metropolitan Opera, where Netrebko had sung in nearly 200 performances, ended her upcoming engagements and raised doubts about her return after she failed to denounce Putin.

In 2005 Netrebko was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation for her contributions to opera, and in 2008 she was named People’s Artist of Russia. From 2007 she was an active supporter of children’s charities, including the Russian Children’s Welfare Society and SOS Children’s Villages International.