January: following Anna Netrebko’s  success in Salzburg’s Il Trovatore production, Deutsche Grammophone presents an opera release for the start of 2015, recorded during her U-Live tour in 2012. Anna Netrebko performs Iolanta, the title role of one of Tchaikovsky’s most passionate, evocative scores and one of opera’s most enigmatic figures.  In this recording, Emmanuel Villaume – with whom Netrebko collaborated on the successful Souvenirs album – leads a stellar cast comprising a number of Russia’s biggest opera stars (Markov, Skorokhodov, Kowaljow).  Netrebko is scheduled for eight staged performances of Iolanta at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in January-February 2015, as well as a Royal Albert Hall date later in the season.