Marina Poplavskaya Does Not Do Floors

(Photo: Klaus Lefebvre/De Nederlandse Opera)

Whether or not she is taking a swipe at fellow Russian soprano Anna Netrebko for her days washing floors at the Mariinsky Theater or not,  Marina Poplavskaya will be filling Violetta's shoes in the new Willy Decker production at the MET which was debuted in Salzburg 2005 by the Ms. Netrebko. Read the quote after the jump.

"The world dreams of seeing a real-life Cinderella," Ms. Poplavskaya (pronounced puh-PLAHV-sky-uh) said in a recent interview backstage at the Met. "They hope you were washing floors when Luciano Pavarotti came by, and then a miracle happened." If her onstage persona is opaque but impulsive, her conversation seems tinged with a very Russian fatalism, disillusionment and sense of the absurd, sometimes bone dry, sometimes contemptuous, sometimes wildly amused.