'Anna – Stage of Emotions' Stunning Music Film Streamed on DG Stage

Anna Netrebko’s first classical solo album in five years was released by Deutsche Grammophon on 5 November 2021. Amata dalle tenebre features the soprano’s very personal choice of iconic arias by Cilea, Puccini, Purcell, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Verdi and Wagner, and was recorded at La Scala, Milan with the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala and the opera house’s Music Director, Riccardo Chailly. As part of this exciting new project, Italian filmmaker Elena Petitti di Roreto has immortalised four of Netrebko’s performances in Anna – Stage of Emotions: a radical mix of the sensual essence of opera and a contemporary visual vocabulary, reflecting some of the powerful themes that run through this music, from love and hope to death and despair. The film forms an integral part of the deluxe edition of the album (CD + Blu-ray), and is available in the Dolby Atmos immersive 3D audio format. Produced by Rekorder GmbH, Anna – Stage of Emotions will be streamed on DG Stage at 8pm (CET) on 26 November 2021.

Alongside arias from Adriana Lecouvreur, Don Carlo, Lohengrin, Madama Butterfly and Manon Lescaut, Netrebko’s album also includes six excerpts she has never recorded before: “Ritorna vincitor! … Numi, pietà del mio soffrir!” from Verdi’s Aida; Lisa’s Aria from Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame; Ariadne’s “Es gibt ein Reich” from Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos; two further extracts by Wagner – “Dich, teure Halle” from Tannhäuser and Isolde’s Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde; and finally, in a rare incursion into the Baroque repertoire, “When I am laid in earth” from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

Renowned director Elena Petitti di Roreto and her crew joined Netrebko as she was recording in Milan and worked closely with her to create a multidimensional and visually inventive depiction of her artistry. As well as filming the singer as Aida, Dido, Lisa and Isolde, they shot her in more guarded moments, in and around La Scala. “I wanted to see what might be happening in her head, to understand how a performer feels after a rehearsal,” explains Petitti di Roreto. “And to see Anna in her personal, intimate space and not just when she’s on stage.” We also see the artist backstage, and gain further insight into her life and work, and the connections between the two, from the fragments of interview that are interwoven with the four arias.

The director uses Netrebko herself, therefore, as the narrative thread that links the performances from four very different operas, to which she presents four contrasting and stylised cinematic responses, using both film and digital layering to focus on what she calls each aria’s “core of emotion”. The central theme of Aida, for example, is reflected in a sensuous love scene, inspired by the work of French director Robert Bresson, while Netrebko’s Isolde actually takes flight above the soaring waves of Wagner’s Liebestod, echoing the sensation she felt while singing the aria with Maestro Chailly and his orchestra: “I was flying when I was recording that, blissfully happy, in harmony with the music.”

With its original, contemporary approach to storytelling in film, Anna – Stage of Emotions offers music-lovers a beautiful and multifaceted portrait of one of the greatest singers of our time.

Anna – Stage of Emotions will be streamed on DG Stage at 8pm (CET) on 26 November 2021, tickets are available here.