Puccini - Manon Lescaut

The Guardian 60

Netrebko/Eyvazov/Pina/Munich RO/Armiliato
(Deutsche Grammophon, two CDs)

With appearances in stage productions in Vienna, Moscow and New York, as well as the three concert performances at the Salzburg festival in August, from which this recording of Manon Lescaut has been created, the title role in Puccini’s first successful opera has dominated Anna Netrebko’s schedule in 2016. Deutsche Grammophon’s rush release of these discs is presumably intended to coincide with Netrebko’s most recent performances in the role at the Metropolitan Opera.

The sound (recorded in the Grosses Festspielhaus) is sometimes recessed and with so much applause retained, not only at the beginnings and ends of acts but after individual arias, too, it all seems a bit rough and ready, and musically uneven. Marco Armiliato’s conducting is rhythmically flaccid and the playing of the Munich Radio Orchestra efficient but rarely characterful, yet Netrebko’s performance makes it worth hearing. She charts Manon’s journey from the ingenue of the first act, through the flighty vamp of the second to the tragic figure of the last very surely, and makes her final-act aria the emotional crux of the opera, always with a wonderfully rich, perfectly controlled sound, even when her Italian diction is hit-and-miss.

Related: Anna Netrebko: Verismo CD review – gleam, fizz and expressive maturity