Anna Netrebko's and Dmitri Hvorostovsky's Red Square Concert on ARTE

Anna Netrebko's and Dmitry Hvorostovsky's Red Square concert last night, broadcast on the ARTE channel, was without doubt one of this summer's musical highlights on television. Sadly, the first part of the concert suffered from the excessive evening sunlight, but that minor flaw was more than compensated by the stunning images of the square, the Kremlin and Moscow, later on in the concert.

Not surprisingly, the vocally and musically most dashing part of the program came in the end, with a scene from Eugene Onegin. Then we heard one of Netrebko's favorite extras, Kálmán's "Heia, heia, in den Bergen ist mein Heimatland", which was followed by Hvorostovsky's powerful version of Dark Eyes. Both singers then ended the evening with the Russian evergreen, the Moscow Lights.