Anna Netrebko and Dimitri Hvorostovsky at Carnegie Hall, May 30, 2007. Orchestra of St. Luke's, Asher Fisch, cond.
This was as much a party as a concert, and at times the audience danced in the aisles. In my 40+ years of concert going, I've never seen anything like it. Here's Anna Netrebko in an impossibly low cut gown, singing the most difficult opera arias to perfection, even, and this is the hardest possible thing to do, creating characters in a concert venue. And there's incredibly handsome Dimitri Hvorostovsky (would he ever be the Emile De Becque of our dreams), doing the same thing. When they sang their three duets together, the chemistry was smoking. There were many highlights in this concert, but I'd single out first and foremost their red hot "Eugene Onegin" duet which was idiomatically perfection, and her singing of an aria from Lehar's Giuditta "Meine Lippen, Sie Kussen So Heiss" in which she sashayed across the stage playing shamelessly to the audience. Fantastic. Anna Netrebko is the biggest soprano star to come along since Maria Callas and she is in her prime. This is the now in opera, and are we ever lucky! Broadway Bridge and Tunnel Test grade A+