What do Anna Netrebko, Jonas Kaufmann, Renee Fleming, Joyce di Donato, Elina Garanca, Juan Diego Florez, Vittorio Grigolo and Valentina Naforniţă have in common? Apart from worldwide success on opera stages, the seventeenth season of live broadcast on 'An Evening at the Opera'!

A season which begins on 15^th November with a Manon Lescaut performance, broadcast live from the Bavarian State Opera and which will end on 2^nd May next year, with the Viennese performance of Don Pasquale, presenting thus the debut of Valentina Naforniţă in the role of Norina: between these landmarks there are ten more performances from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, as well as the performance opening the 2014-2015 Season at Il Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

The first two to be mentioned, Netrebko and Kaufmann, we should have listened to on 15^th November, in the latest production of Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich - an evening we are personally waiting for with great interest due to the fact that it reunited the two singers after no less than six years of separate evolution.

The only thing is that on 3^rd November, Netrebko announced she would be leaving the production because of some disagreements with the director Hans Neuenfels, known for his 'provoking' visions - as Nikolaus Bachler, the intendant of the Bavarian State Opera - who replaced Anna Netrebko with Latvian Christine Opolais, the former partner of Kaufmann the previous summer in another Manon Lescaut production at the Royal Opera House.

A great disappointment, for the public, I suppose, as well as for me because I was not keen on finding out what kind of Manon, Christine Opolais could interpret; just not before listening to Netrebko in Manon Lascaut!

Nevertheless, this does not make any difference now; and I am really trying to be fair by telling you that the duo Opolais - Kauffmann achieved grand success, being praised especially for its 'vocal marriage made in heaven', that vocal chemistry we would expect to find in casts of all opera productions. And, of course, I cannot fail to emphasize the diligence with which Christine Opolais goes for important, demanding parts, as well as her readiness for 'saving' any other performance: to be remembered that she was the one who replaced Anita Hartig, in the role of Mimi at the MET, on 5^th April, broadcast HD to movie theatres, at a time when the latter was not available; a performance that came at a less than one day interval from Madame Butterfly where Opolais made her debut in the overly demanding role of Cio-Cio San.

Indeed, Christine Opolais becomes more and more involved in the first row of opera singers. And it may happen that the newly created situation in Munich may turn in her favour again.

In any case, I am ready to accompany your listening of the performance with an opinion as informed as I can get, by inviting on 15^th November, in the studio of 'An Evening at the Opera' programme, the great soprano Maria Slătinaru Nistor, a wonderful Manon Lescaut at the Verona Arena thirty years ago, and I will be waiting for our encounter to start at 20:00.