Cooking by grades: Anna Netrebko wrote a cookbook – Culture

Anna added salt. And this, although there were neither beans, pears nor shoulder of mutton, as in Günter Grass’ famous cookbook. Just soup.

That was sixteen years ago, when the celebrities boiled up on the Salzburg Cathedral Square for the pauperized. Anna Netrebko, the greatest soprano in the world, was at the stove with director Martin Kusej. On page 72 of her new cookbook (Anna Netrebko: The Taste of My Life. Molden Verlag, Vienna 2021. 160 pages, 30 euros) you can see Netrebko’s mouth open in shock while Kusej takes the boiling broth from the stove. Oh, it doesn’t matter, says the expression on his face, many women can’t cook. And many more cannot sing properly. But – far from it, Maestro Kusej! Anna Netrebko can do both.

That’s why she brought out her cookbook before her new CD, which otherwise would have drawn everyone’s attention again. “Amata dalle tenebre” is the name of the album – loved by darkness. It will be out on November 5th. Although Madame had a damaged shoulder and canceled all appointments for the time being. The Amata album is a worthy consolation. She not only sings gloomy things by Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, uplifting things by Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, but also heartbreaking things by Peter Tchaikovsky, for example the aria from the opera “Pique Dame”: “Akh, istomilas ya gorem” – mourned enough . Yes, that’s how you know them. Everything has an end, now it’s all right again. A hearty soup will quickly get the soul back on its feet, and what recipe would be closer than that for a tasty Russian borscht?

Important: a large pot. Very large

How do you actually pronounce it? Ludmilla from the restaurant “Olga” says “Borsch” on Youtube, like a Borsch. And Anna? Doesn’t speak at all. Has shoulder. But you can imagine how she would have pronounced “borscht”, warm and soft and with all these memories of the communist childhood in Krasnodar. In the first chapter “Once in Soviet Lands”, after blini cake with salmon and trout caviar – wonderful fruits of socialism – the borsch jumps towards us. Or the borsch? Ludmilla says “a borsch”. In any case, we need mountains of vegetables and plenty of soup meat. In the wholesale market you can find the tail and breast of the cow and all the rest of the anatomy. After three tours through the refrigerator, we decide on the cross rib of the young bull: “Born in Germany, fattened in Germany, slaughtered in Germany, butchered in Germany.” Think globally, act locally. There is no Russian beef here anyway.

Hence the German young bull with a bone. Perfect. Important: Do not pre- or post-salt. Simply boil it in water, otherwise the broth won’t do anything. Netrebko writes: in a big pot. In one of her family photos in the introductory part of the book, 13 people are seated around the dining table. The soup pot should therefore hold about ten liters. At least more than five, as you can see when, in addition to the prescribed three liters of water, the meat and mountains of beetroot, celeriac, celery, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, onions and parsley roots gradually raise the water level above the five-liter mark . Especially since Netrebko, unlike Ludmilla, doesn’t just dice all vegetables and so you could quickly take them out of the pot if it overflows.

As a singer, you can best compare her to a nuclear power plant

No, only part of it goes into the geometric processing, the white cabbage, on the other hand, is cut into wafer-thin strips, and carrots and beetroot are even grated. That feels very professional right away. According to the recipe, the beetroot should be grated at the same time and be rolled. Difficult. On the other hand, it hides the professional processing of the celeriac. What’s going on, what did Ludmilla say? Not an easy decision. Maybe dice the celery and grate the beetroot? It is now a bit like vibrato in the higher register. Do you prefer to grate the fourth lead on the c or the following h? Ultimately, it’s a question of character. Too much is vulgar, too little seems snobbish. As you can hear on their new album: With Netrebko it always sounds decent and innocent and well-dosed.

Open detailed view

Their musical intensity does not arise from volume and timbre hysteria, but rather, like in a nuclear power plant, from the slowed down, cultivated explosion. Of course, this also includes the creeps, there could be a super-GAU one day and it would break out of her on the open stage, and she would, for example, as Manon – “lonely, lost, abandoned” – toss everything and her stage lover or the audience insult. Won’t happen, don’t worry. Instead, she will perform her world pain aria with her beguilingly darkened soprano and the radiant height that carries great emotions: solo, perduta, abandonata. And at the end of this album even – “mildly and quietly, how he smiles” – sink into Isolde’s love death.

And as balanced as she has her sonorous stage life under control, the palate of her borscht is just as balanced. Lyrical expanse and faked coloratura, classy spice and lurking acidity meet in silent harmony. Yes, after about three hours you can dice and grate and boil – “skim off the foam” – say it tastes like in Russia, back then in Café Pushkin on Tverskoy Boulevard, where the café workers drive your Rolls-Royce around the block, until you’ve finished eating. That can take a while, but parking spaces are also rare in Moscow. Back then there was an elaborately multi-layered ice cream bomb for dessert. You look in vain for that in the Netrebko cookbook, the most down-to-earth of all opera divas.