Netrebko, Queen of La Scala

The Russian soprano still sweeps all before her in La forza del destino

‘Pace, pace, mio Dio!’ - Anna Netrebko in her pomp as Leonora di Vargas Picture © Brescia e Amisano/Teatro alla Scala

No opera company celebrates the opening of its season more lavishly than the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The feast of Sant’Ambrogio, the city’s patron, falls on December 7 and every year this is a red-letter night on the international opera agenda, with a glittering audience eagerly expecting to see the crême de la crême of the world’s opera stars.

This year’s audience included an astonishingly youthful-looking Raina Kabaivanska (who celebrates her 90th birthday today) and three big-name tenors, Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and Francesco Meli (last year’s Don Carlo at this address). They had gathered to hear a starry cast led by Anna Netrebko, Jonas Kaufmann and Ludovic Tézier in Verdi’s La forza del destino, performed in the composer’s 1869 revision for his home theatre.

This was the first new Milan production of Forza since 2000, when Riccardo Muti was still in charge. A year later Valéry Gergiev and the Maryinsky Theatre brought the original version of the opera, which was commissioned by the St Petersburg theatre and first performed there in 1862. It seemed right that Riccardo Chailly, the company’s current music director, should prefer the Scala revision, which has become the standard text for a work that counts as one of the composer’s ‘problem’ operas.