Anna Netrebko says it is a high note of another kind: She is pregnant and she's
getting married. The 36-year-old star soprano and her fiance, Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott, are expecting a child this autumn, Netrebko's management company said Monday.
"We are both very, very happy that soon there will be three of us," Netrebko said in a statement.
It will be her first child. She and Schrott, 35, became engaged late last year in New York.
The Russian-born diva, who holds Austrian citizenship, has been making a film version of Puccini's La Boheme in Vienna for German television.
She and Schrott have shared the stage several times over the past few years, singing Mozart's Don Giovanni and other works, and they performed together in December in Puerto Rico.
Her manager, Jeffrey Vanderveen, said Netrebko "will keep her engagements as long as her doctors permit it."
She is scheduled to perform in Massenet's Manon, which opens April 4 at the Vienna State Opera.
Austrian media said Netrebko was still scheduled to join Rolando Villazon and Placido Domingo in a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic on the grounds of Vienna's Schoenbrunn Palace on June 27, two days before the capital hosts the final of the Euro 2008 soccer tournament.
She was to appear with Villazon in Charles Gounod's Romeo and Juliet at the Salzburg Festival in August, but pulled out because of the pregnancy, festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler said Monday.
"We are surprised, but we understand. The most beautiful reason for a cancellation is a child," Rabl-Stadler was quoted as telling the Austria Press Agency.
"We'll send her the most beautiful bouquet in the world" when the baby is born, Rabl-Stadler said.
Netrebko has withdrawn from the Metropolitan Opera's revival of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor that begins Oct. 3, but performances in January 2009 are still on, Vanderveen said Monday in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Her engagement at the Met for "Manon," scheduled Dec. 15 through Jan. 10, 2009, is under discussion, Vanderveen said.
"Bottom line is: She will sing as long as her doctors say it is fine," he said. "When she comes back is a life decision (and a vocal decision) that she is considering now."
(Agencies via China Daily February 5, 2008)
