Anna Caterina Antonacci Is Just Fine Not Singing at the MET

The relaxed diva not concerned about the MET
(Photo: Pierre Mandereau)

"Nevertheless, she can seem a mass of paradoxes. She fits no stereotype and no precise vocal Fach. She was an early starter yet a late developer; she made headlines in Handel and Rossini but still had the courage to reinvent herself entirely at the age of thirty-eight. Her voice defies classification, yet she can fit it to an eclectic range of music, from great mezzo roles such as Carmen to Monteverdi, Berlioz and Gluck, as well as the songs of Respighi, Chausson and Fauré, to name a few. Remarkably, she has never sung at the Met. In the pub, Antonacci smiles and shrugs. 'I regret a little that I never, never sang at the Met,' she says, 'but I think perhaps they choose more the recording stars. It's a world that is quite far from mine.' Though she doesn't have a major label contract, she is well represented on opera DVDs — including, for instance, Carmen twice, Ermione, Rodelinda, Les Troyens, Cherubini's Medea and even Marschner's rarely heard Hans Heiling — and on CDs of L'Incoronazione di Poppea, La Mort de Cléopâtre and Così Fan Tutte, among others. But she has made only one solo album to date — Italian Renaissance works, mainly her beloved Monteverdi, under the title Era la Notte (on theAstrée Naïve label). The disc is based on a music-theater project that she toured in Europe: it brought together some of the great 'mad scenes' of early opera and culminated in Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. OPERA NEWS's critic declared, 'Antonacci mesmerizes the house for a full, uninterrupted hour, running the gamut of vocal expression.'" [Source]