Top Five Items I'm Not Going To Blog About

1. New York Philharmonic Going to North Korea. Can they leave Maazel there?

2. New York City Opera Not Having a 2008-2009 Season While Renovation Takes Place at the State Theater. The problem isn't a "dark season." The San Francisco Opera managed to live through one.

3. Rumors that Anna Netrebko is Gay. The woman I saw her with the other night was not Lucy Diakovska.

4. MP3 vs. Hi Fi Audio. I'm still trying to get my Victrola to work.

5. The Gramophone and Typewriter Company's Unique Visitors Up for Third Straight Month!

Netrebko

I haven't blogged on Anna Netrebko because I haven't wanted to enter the controversy--quite passionate, over at Opera-L--that has swirled around her. Opera fanatics being known for their extreme positions, you can well imagine that she has excited ardent devotion and animosity in equal measure. Is she a good singer? Is she a good actress? It seems to depend on whom you ask. She is either the reincarnation of Geraldine Farrar or the worst thing to hit opera since Andrea Bocelli.

Still, I can't deny the immeasurable thrill of seeing her in the audience at last night's Iphigenie--at one point she ran past me with a female companion and I was momentarily stunned. My feeling about her, as one who has seen her recently as well as way back when the Kirov came to New York to present Betrothal in a Monastery, is that in the right role she is about as good as it gets--she can sing beautifully when the part fits her, she is a game actress, and, yes, she is a ravishingly gorgeous woman. (As an example, check out her Susanna in the Salzburg Nozze di Figaro now on DVD.) She is bringing glamor back to opera, and that is only a good thing, and beyond that I will hold my peace.