One leap too far. Netrebko as Tosca turned out to be a miscalculation of the more damaging type. For the first time in my experience of her, this proved an unsuitable role whose challenges her technique could not meet and that did not keep her safe, with an outcome that makes her future plans sound like a one-last-big-payday strategy. Understand: her career is already of respectable length, and if she never sings another note, she will have gained, on merit, a place in the succession of artists who have made a difference. So the point in any analysis of this occasion is to see if we can ascribe causation. She’s always gotten away with it; now she hasn’t. What can we learn? And oh, yes: one of the differences made by artists who make a difference is by way of setting a model for emulation. That can be constructive, or not, depending on which of the model’s features are emulated.

Since Netrebko appears to have enjoyed good health, clearly has plenty of energy, is still some eight or ten years from expectable soprano retirement age, and doesn’t show signs of more than minimal impact from possible age- or hormone-related considerations (childbirth, menopause, pre- or aftermath of same), we have every reason to suppose that the limitations-and-usage factors have been the major influences on the condition of her voice. Besides, we can hear them, and can track them, in occult form, from early on. This means talking technique again—the fundamental, structural parts of technique, not the pretty artifacts. And I know that this can feel exclusionary for some readers, an overemphasis on things of interest only to vocal professionals. Wrong! They are the things that determine not only the sound and behavior of a voice, but the interpretive range of which it’s capable and, ultimately, our sensory and emotional experience of the performance. So, to my mind, anyone interested in such experience should be interested in what accounts for it on the sending end: the craft that makes the art. Talk about craft needs to be clear, and therefore dispassionate. Doesn’t mean I don’t love Anna.

The condition of Netrebko’s voice as shown by her Tosca ^(I) bore some resemblances to that of Sonia Yoncheva as Luisa, as described in my last post. That is: a light chest engagement at the bottom (Yoncheva’s clearer and more defined, Netrebko’s more blended—Netrebko often avoids the defined chest, even at expectable places like the descents to D and C on open vowels in the “Regnava“); a shaded, “covered” treatment of vowels just above that, and then, in the upper-middle range, an attempt to let go of (rather than gathering and solidifying) built-up weight, and to release into a freer, lighter action. There are differences, too, as between any two voices, the first being that Yoncheva is younger and not so far down the road, and the second being that however these voices are handled technically, Yoncheva’s is certainly slightly heavier in calibre, slightly lower in reach, than Netrebko’s. When Yoncheva gets to the top B and C, she gets a strong, almost spinto-ish sound. Netrebko gets a nice, shiny, coloratura-ish one, one that belongs to Lyudmilla or Gilda, or an Early Modern Lucia  (pre-Callas, pre-Sutherland)—that belongs, in other words, to Netrebko’s “original” voice.