Anna Netrebko

Anna Netrebko rose to global prominence thanks to the pinpoint precision and luminous clarity of her soprano along with an unmistakable theatrical magnetism that resonated equally in opera houses and on German pop charts. Born September 18, 1971, in Krasnodar, Russia, she trained at the Conservatory of St. Petersburg while earning wages as a cleaner. That combination of vocal promise and daily custodial presence drew the notice of conductor Valery Gergiev, who became her mentor and arranged her first leading assignment, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro.

After additional principal parts with the Kirov Opera, she reached American audiences in 1995 as Lyudmila in the San Francisco Opera production of Ruslan and Lyudmila. International engagements soon followed, encompassing leading roles in War and Peace, La Bohème, and I Capuleti e i Montecchi.

Her Metropolitan Opera bow came in 2002 as Natasha in War and Peace; the next year she issued her debut full-length recital, Opera Arias. Sempre Libera appeared in 2004. Extensive touring during the ensuing seasons earned widespread critical admiration for her interpretations of Roméo et Juliette, La Traviata, and I Puritani, many of them shared with Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon. In 2006 she obtained Austrian citizenship to ease travel restrictions, and that same year European stores received her third album, Russian Album. Its Top Ten showing on the German pop charts cleared the path for Duets, a joint project with Villazon released early the following year. She made her Carnegie Hall debut only months later.

To reach broader listeners she began issuing recital discs of well-known arias (2007’s Opera), folk and salon pieces (2008’s Souvenirs), and favorite Russian selections (2010’s In the Still of Night), while continuing to record complete operas for traditional collectors.

In 2013 she disclosed her move to a New York apartment shared with her son and sister. That year brought two new recordings: one marking the two-hundredth anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth and a fresh account of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. The subsequent winter she returned to Russia for performances at the Olympic Ceremonies in Sochi. A live recording of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta followed in 2015, and Verismo, devoted to Italian repertoire, appeared in 2016. After her marriage to Azerbaijani tenor Yusif Eyvazov the couple released the collaborative album Romanza in 2017.