Vissi d arte anna netrebko biography

The draw on paper here might be Anna Netrebko as Tosca at Ls Scala, Milan with Riccardo Chailly at the helm, but it is the performance at Dutch National Opera, conducted by  Lorenzo Viotti and directed by Barrie Kosky, that is the clear winner.

Barrie Kosky's Mafia Tosca was, ironically in the light of this post, initially conducted by Riccardo Chailly back in 1998; it is Chailly, of course, who conducts the Netrebko Tosca also considered here.

I have not always warmed to Barrie Kosky as director, but in Tosca he pulls it off. Reflecting the dark plot, the staging itself concentrates on a selection of blacks and grays; it is Klaus Bruns' constumes that add somewhat painterly splashes of colour.

The grays and blacks of a church vie with the ultra-modern Minimalist/brutalist kitchen of the second act. Perhaps the greatest surprise is the positively nightmarish tableau vivant at the end of the first act: a triptych in which the c