Netrebko’s Manon soars over the rest of the cast, framed attentively, eloquently and imaginatively by Marco Armiliato and the Munich Radio Orchestra. It’s a riveting, sometimes wayward performance that fails to sound remotely girlish in Act I but captures perfectly the greed, impetuousness, self-destructiveness and lust for life in Acts II and III, with a full-throated, full-hearted account of ‘Sola, perduta, abbandonata’

Netrebko’s may not be the most nuanced portrayal of the convent girl who goes from society queen to fallen woman, but it brims with conviction…vocally [she] is in luxuriant form, her dark-tinted soprano as edible as all the chocs in a luxury assortment

Netrebko offers both seductive beauty of tone and richly detailed phrasing as Manon…combining a still fragantly luscious timbre with insinuating diction and a sense of spontaneous - almost careless - abandonment to the sensations and feelings of the moment. In short a treasurable performance that makes the set worth hearing.

Netrebko’s performance makes it worth hearing. She charts Manon’s journey from the ingenue of the first act, through the flighty vamp of the second to the tragic figure of the last very surely, and makes her final-act aria the emotional crux of the opera, always with a wonderfully rich, perfectly controlled sound, even when her Italian diction is hit-and-miss.

Netrebko has developed the vocal sweep to carry the big phrases through, and her high notes, generally a strength, are glorious here.