This was recorded live in Salzburg last August (2016) and is probably a patchwork made up of parts of the three performances given then. Audience applause is included but one copes with it. The performances’ raison d’être is Anna Netrebko, opera’s one true superstar soprano at the moment who has, in the past 15 years, gone from sweet, not-quite-soubrette, almost-coloratura, to a true spinto, having sung Lady Macbeth and soon to take on the title role in Turandot.
Manon Lescaut requires a full-voiced soprano–Tebaldi, later-career Freni, Callas (on recordings), Caballé, with solid top notes, a keen dramatic sense, and vocal allure–and now, Netrebko has it all.
As heard three months later at the Met, her Manon really comes into its own in Act 2–she sounds somewhat too knowing and agreeable in Act 1 to be a teenager on her way to a convent–but once she catches fire, she blazes.
“In quelle trine morbide” is filled with longing and already a sense of regret for the turn she’s taken, and her huge double-barreled duet with her lover, Des Grieux, is willful and sexy. Her desperation in Act 3 is multiplied in her long final scene, sung with true tragedy–and beautiful tone, shadings of color, and more attention to the text than has sometimes been the case, although her Italian still has some funny ideas about vowels.
Her Des Grieux is her real-life husband, Yusif Eyvazov, and he’s quite a find. The Azerbaijani tenor has a lyric voice of some substance with solid top notes with plenty of ping. If he occasionally works too hard–pushes a bit, overarticulates–and does not often scale his voice back to a particularly sweet sound, well, it’s a pleasure just to hear this music sung with such accuracy, energy, earnestness, and handsome tone. Dark-hued baritone Armando Piña, in the more-or-less thankless role of Lescaut who pimps out his sister with little thought, is well sung and snidely characterized. The veteran bass Carlos Chausson as the wealthy Geronte, who procures Manon, takes his vengeance cold. The others in the cast are very good, particularly Benjamin Bernheim as Edmondo, Des Grieux’s student friend.
Conductor Marco Armiliato, lately a Met mainstay, leads the Munich players and Viennese chorus with authority and attention to the young Puccini’s gorgeous melodies. When the cast banters back and forth, it’s truly casual and conversational, the lyrical moments are ravishing, and the last two acts have genuine gravitas. The recorded sound is excellent. There is something fiery about the EMI recording with Callas and di Stefano that keeps it ahead of this one, and a 1993 Decca recording under James Levine with Mirella Freni and Luciano Pavarotti at their most ripe is fabulous.
