Putin’s aggressive war against Ukraine is causing many countries, organizations, and individuals to choose sides.
Choosing sides, the vaunted Metropolitan Opera, which will give a concert for a Ukrainian cause on Monday night, has parted ways, for at least two years, with the leading diva in the opera world, Russian Soprano Anna Netrebko.
“It is a great artistic loss for the Met and for opera,” Met general manager Peter Gelb announced on Thursday. “Anna is one of the greatest singers in Met history, but with Putin killing innocent victims in Ukraine, there was no way forward.”
Gelb said last Sunday that the Met would not continue to associate with artists who support Putin. The Met had previously tried to persuade Netrebko to renounce her support for the Russian president, but their efforts were useless.
Netrebko is a known supporter of Vladimir Putin. For example, she supported Putin in his last sham election. And Putin once presented her with a significant national award.
As she told it, Netrebko’s story was that as a teenager, she took a job as a maid in the primary opera hall in Moscow so she could wiggle her way into appointments and auditions. If true, it worked marvelously, as she ascended to the very top and is a darling at the Met, having opened the season 3-4 times in 20 years.
Netrebko has called on Russia to end the war. She noted in a statement, “I am opposed to this senseless war of aggression, and I am calling on Russia to end this war right now, to save all of us. We need peace right now.”
However, the Met wanted more; specifically, they called on her to denounce Putin, which she refused to do.
“Forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right. This should be a free choice. Like many of my colleagues, I am not a political person. I am not an expert in politics. I am an artist, and my purpose is to unite people across political divides,” Netrebko wrote on an Instagram post on Saturday.
Everybody must pay in a war, and opera fans, including yours truly, are paying a small price here. I was looking forward to her role in the opera Turandot in May. I wondered if she would make that opera more appealing to me.
I am not a big fan of that opera, but divas have a way of getting there, and I thought she might do it. Opera fans, more steeped in the music than I, love Turandot. I only watch it for the great aria, Nessun Dorma, Luciano Pavarotti’s signature song.
By the way, to great amazement from many of us, Pavarotti asked the primary musical diva, Aretha, to fill in for him back in the mid-1990s singing this song. However, surprising none of us Aretha people, she knocked it out of the park.
No wonder. As the editor of Opera News wrote when the great Aretha passed, “I wish all aspiring singers—male as well as female, working in every genre of music—would spend some quality time listening to Aretha Franklin.”
But I stray. Please note that the Met is replacing Anna Netrebko in Turandot with a Ukrainian soprano.