There was a definite buzz in the house tonight during the season premiere of War and Peace: frenetic hordes of performers in the hallways, some stage animals lolling by the elevator (everyone is in love with Carmella the goat), and a glamorous audience in the lobby. The radio department stole the glamour award tonight though—we had Broadway star Michael Cerveris and Anna Netrebko to speak to us at intermission. Michael is appearing in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline next door at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, and spent his one free night of the week at the opera and “working” at intermission. What a trooper. And what a speaking voice! Hypnotic. However, it’s hard to remember anything from the evening beyond Anna Netrebko—she is just, well, amazing. Beautiful, chic, and spectacularly bejeweled, she spoke to us with absolutely no airs about the role of Natasha (in which she made a memorable Met debut in 2002) as well as her upcoming appearances in Roméo et Juliette. She even took a moment to compliment Margaret’s handling of the long list of difficult Russian names in the cast of War and Peace! In sum, we were all completely in love with her.

Margaret took the night off tonight to attend Terence McNally’s play The Ritz, so producer Mary Jo Heath and I managed on our own for tonight’s performance of Aida. This worked out well, since our first guest to interview was diva Renée Fleming, a friend of Mary Jo’s. La Fleming was casual and candid, talking about her Violetta in La Traviata. She plans to retire the role after a few more scheduled performances outside of New York, since, as she said, she doesn’t care to repeat roles too often. During the second intermission, I got to interview two of our favorite guests—supers Brendan Irving and Brian Baldwin. These guys, accomplished actors who are regulars on the Met stage, have a unique perspective on productions and are always good for some excellent backstage gossip. Unfortunately, they were both well behaved the night I interviewed them, although I learned a lot about the Macbeth production and the upcoming War and Peace.

Tonight we enjoyed La Traviata with the one and only Renée Fleming and a very young-sounding Matthew Polenzani, with Marco Armiliato conducting. All of Armiliato’s performances are a special treat for us in the broadcast studio, because we have a closed-circuit camera on the conductor, and no one expresses the score with facial and body movements quite like Marco. We had conductor Steven Osgood as a guest during intermission, and this was especially interesting to us because our previous work with Steven was for last season’s world premiere of The First Emperor. It’s astounding how a musician can be equally at home in new music and core repertory, but Steven manages. He also told us a little about his ongoing work with American Opera Projects, a group specializing in developing and presenting new work from emerging composers. How’s that for “new” music?