Democracy long gone in US as Metropolitan Opera Dir. Gelb demands artists denouce Pres. Putin, fires renowned Russian soprano Netrebko after she politely said it’s not right to force artists and public figures to make political statements and denounce homelands

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As it happens, Met Opera Director Peter Gelb’s wife is Ukrainian-Canadian. “When asked if America was at war with Russia, Gelb replied, remarkably, “The Met is, and indirectly, the US is, obviously. We may not say we’re at war with them, but we are at war with them.””

5/27/22, “Waging Proxy War in Ukraine Won’t Save Us From Ourselves,” The Nation, David Bromwich

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Peter Gelb and Anna Netrebko attend Metropolitan Opera Opening Night Gala, Premiere Of Porgy and Bess on September 23, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Jared Siskin / Getty Images)”

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“On March 3, [2022] the Metropolitan Opera severed its relations with the singer Anna Netrebko because, in speaking out against the Ukraine war, 

she failed to denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin and

said a word in defense of artistic freedom:

“I am opposed to this war. I am Russian and I love my country but I have many friends in Ukraine and the pain and suffering right now breaks my heart. I want this war to end and for people to be able to live in peace….I want to add,

however:

forcing artists, or any public figure,

to voice their political opinions in public and

to denounce their homeland is not right.”

Would any foreign artist in living memory have been so publicly dishonored

for not reciting the prepared script?…

On May 13, [2022] Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives,

said that the US is now “at war” with Russia.

Congressional Republicans were overwhelming, and Democrats

unanimous, in voting for a $40 billion

war-assistance package to be sent to Ukraine.

Apparently without any serious debate,

we find ourselves on the brink of all-out war in defense of a favored nation,

against a nuclear-armed power, Russia….

While we instruct the world in democracy,

our own politics has become a scene of uninhibited aggression

that undermines our standing as instructors….

What we have seen in the last 10 years, intensified in the last five,

and raised to a fever pitch in the last two,

is the ascent of mob psychology and hysteria on an exorbitant scale.

It shows in our lazy, frightened acceptance of censorship—lately elevated to the point

where Facebook and Twitter could jointly announce

a ban on all messages, news, and communications

that “undermine trust in the Ukrainian government.”

This kind of blackout was considered beneath our dignity in the fight against Hitler and the Cold War.

The US proxy war in Ukraine, and the bipartisan

self-satisfaction with which many Americans regard it,

is an exercise of displacement.”…

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“David Bromwich teaches literature at Yale University. His latest books are American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us (Verso Books), and How Words Make Things Happen (Oxford), both published in 2019.”

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Added: “When asked if America was at war with Russia, Gelb replied, remarkably, “The Met is, and indirectly, the US is, obviously. We may not say we’re at war with them, but we are at war with them.”

July 4, 2022, “Opera star Anna Netrebko files grievance against the Metropolitan Opera,“ David Walsh, wsws

“Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, one of the world’s most renowned opera singers, has reportedly filed a grievance against the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

The Met Opera, under General Manager Peter Gelb,

moved to ban Netrebko in early March [2022] following the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

claiming she had not done enough to disassociate herself from the Putin regime.

Aside from the crass hypocrisy of the action (the Met has

never responded in like manner to any of the bloody, neo-colonial wars prosecuted by the US over the past 30 years),

the exclusion of Netrebko sets a sinister precedent. One of America’s leading arts institutions

has established the principle

that it will enforce whatever the government’s foreign policy requires,

that it is entirely at the disposal of the White House

and the Pentagon.

The various claims made by Gelb and the Met Opera as to Netrebko’s supposedly close relationship with Putin are a smokescreen, intended to disguise the fact that

it is the Met that is pursuing a thoroughly reactionary, anti-democratic course of action,

joining in the chauvinist, warmongering anti-Russian campaign.

The notion that the American arts and entertainment world would “never again” succumb to McCarthyite witch-hunting, as it did wholeheartedly in the 1940s and 1950s,

has been disproven at almost the first opportunity.

Netrebko’s grievance involves the circumstances of her banning by the Met. She recently asserted, in an interview with Le Monde, the French daily paper,

that in a conversation with Gelb, she consented to withdraw from a production of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot this season,

but that the Met’s general manager

added Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo in the 2022-2023 season

“unilaterally.”

According to the Times, with the assistance of the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing opera singers, Netrebko “filed a labor grievance against the Met. She is expected to seek more than $350,000 in compensation.”

In regard to Putin and the Ukraine war, Netrebko told Le Monde, “The Met was the first to insist that I clarify my position. … Which I did.

But I was also asked to declare myself against Vladimir Putin.

I replied that I had a Russian passport, that he was still the president and that I could not say these words publicly.

So I refused.”

Netrebko added that she and Gelb agreed to terms,

but that she was shocked when he suggested in the New York Times 

that she would never return to the Metropolitan Opera.

Gelb, in an interview posted June 30 by VAN magazine, the online weekly devoted to classical music, made a number of revealing comments. Revealing not only in regard to the Met Opera hierarchy and its attitudes, but about

the American upper middle class as a whole and its endorsement of the US-NATO proxy war.

When asked if America was at war with Russia, Gelb replied, remarkably,

“The Met is, and indirectly, the US is, obviously.

We may not say we’re at war with them, but we are at war with them.”

The Met’s general manager went on to claim that the Russian invasion was “an action to annihilate a civilization, the whole people of Ukraine. What Putin is determined to do is unlike anything that has ever happened before to my knowledge or experience.”

Without in any fashion minimizing the reactionary character of the Russian government’s operation in Ukraine, to suggest that the latter is “unlike anything that has ever happened before” is preposterous.

Nazi Germany’s barbaric war against the USSR,

aided by sections of Ukrainian nationalists, resulted in the deaths of

tens of millions of Soviet citizens.

In more recent times, the US government and military’s murderous sanctions against and subsequent invasion, mass bombings, occupation and general destruction of Iraq have led to

more than a million deaths and the reduction of much of the country to rubble.

As the WSWS aptly argued, the Bush administration pursued a policy of “sociocide” in relation to Iraq.

The devastation of Afghanistan, Libya and Syria

are further monumental crimes.

Where was Gelb looking at the time all this was going on?

Based on the supposedly unprecedented character of the Putin regime’s actions in Ukraine,

Gelb continued,

“It seemed to me there was no way that we could do business with Russia.”

Or with Anna Netrebko. Because, the Met general manager told VAN,

“Netrebko is a close personal ally of Putin,

both in deed and in mindset—

which I know from personal experience, having spoken to her and known her for many, many years—

what I was willing to tolerate seemed no longer tolerable.”

The self-righteous smugness is worth noting.

The Times noted in late June that outside the US, Anna Netrebko’s “comeback is gaining momentum. Several European institutions that had sought distance from her have recently announced plans to engage her, some as soon as next year.” In late May, the newspaper commented, “she sang recitals before enthusiastic crowds in Paris and Milan, where her concert at Teatro alla Scala sold out. Italian news outlets declared it a ‘triumph,’ writing, ‘Anna Netrebko retakes La Scala: flowers and applause after her break for the war.’”

OperaWire reports that the Russian soprano “will return to the Berlin State Opera” in 2023. Company General Director Matthias Schulz explained, following a 40-minute video call with Netrebko, that he “really could see that she suffers under this situation.” Schulz added that he didn’t think “it was appropriate to ask her to distance herself further from Putin, given the risks she might face as a Russian citizen.”

These developments are a blow to the efforts

to destroy Netrebko’s career

in the interests of the US-NATO proxy war.

Various factors are probably at work. Nervousness in certain European capitals over the “never-ending” character of the Ukraine conflict. There may as well be growing resistance on more principled grounds, opposition to the blacklisting of artists. Commercial calculations probably come in somewhere too: Netrebko has a huge following, and the Met’s loss may be other opera companies’ gain.

Peter Gelb’s wife, Ukrainian-Canadian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, was scheduled to conduct performances of Puccini’s Tosca featuring Netrebko at the Teatro Colón, the main opera house in Buenos Aires, in November. Wilson has bowed out. The Russian singer will apparently go ahead with her appearance.”

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Among comments to The Nation article

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“Walter Pewen says: May 27, 2022 at 1:34 pm

As I have commented here before, the engagement with Ukraine started feeling very odd years ago. I will agree, this is now a proxy war--I say that as someone who grew up with family who came over from Southern Russia in 1917. The Ukranians are being used as a feel-OK button for the tens of millions of Americans who on whatever level perceive the dimming of the U.S. on the world stage–and they do not like it. They want 1945 permanently but they are not going to get it, and would not know what to do with that kind of moment anyway. Not again, not in this country.”

 

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