Anna Netrebko says it is a high note of another kind: She is pregnant and she’s getting married.
The 36-year-old star soprano and her fiancé, Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott, are expecting a child this autumn, Netrebko’s management company said Monday.
“We are both very, very happy that soon there will be three of us,” Netrebko said in a statement.
It will be her first child. She and Schrott, 35, became engaged late last year in New York.
Netrebko “will keep her engagements as long as her doctors permit it,” said her manager, Jeffrey Vanderveen.
She is scheduled to perform in Massenet’s “Manon,” which opens April 4 at the Vienna State Opera.
Netrebko was to appear with star tenor Rolando Villazon in Charles Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” at the Salzburg Festival, but pulled out because of the pregnancy, festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler said Monday.
“We are surprised, but we understand. The most beautiful reason for a cancellation is a child,” Rabl-Stadler was quoted as telling the Austria Press Agency.
When Netrebko gives birth to her child, “We’ll send her the most beautiful bouquet in the world,” Rabl-Stadler said.
Netrebko has also withdrawn from the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” that begins Oct. 3, but “it’s still undecided” for the February 2009 performances, Met spokeswoman Sommer Hixson said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Her engagement at the Met for “Manon,” scheduled Dec. 15 through Jan. 10, 2009, is still under discussion, Hixson said.
