It might seem that dropping a lead or even a supporting role in a highly anticipated opera would get your name onto some kind of list. But, of course, there's only one soprano named Anna Yuryevna Netrebko.

As Norman Lebrecht confirms over at his "Slipped Disc" blog on Arts Journal, Netrebko's pulling out of Marguerite at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden's April production of Gounod's Faust.

Like any Faustian anti-hero, the darkness of truth may be hard to discover. What's done is done, though, so let's just be happy Putin hasn't come to claim her soul. Again.

Netrebko's statement is as follows:

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