It started with soprano Anna Netrebko.
In March, the superstar failed to condemn the war in Ukraine in terms explicit enough to satisfy Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb.
It did not matter that reciting the Met’s required denunciation in coercive conditions would likely be false and worthless.
It did not matter that critics within Russia, where Ms. Netrebko remains a citizen, can now be punished with up to 15 years imprisonment for criticizing the government.
It did not matter that her family members in Russia could be made to suffer if she complied with the Met’s diktat.
It did not even matter that she did ultimately condemned the war in terms so strong that she is now banned from performance in Russia.
Peter Gelb didn’t get his woke way, so the only remaining singer who could reliably command a sell-out crowd at his financially troubled and artistically struggling opera company had to go.
The sanctimonious general manager even felt it necessary to announce in The New York Times that there is probably no way for Netrebko ever to come back.
Netrebko’s removal echoed the ugly firing in 2018 of the Met’s late music director James Levine, who faced decades-old sexual harassment allegations that were never proved.
It also recalled the withdrawal, in 2019, of superstar singer and conductor Plácido Domingo after old harassment allegations at other opera companies.
Levine sued the Met and received a $3.5 million settlement before his death on March 9, 2021. Domingo, now over 80 years old, continues to have a productive career in Europe.
With only minor exceptions, Ms. Netrebko’s career in Europe is still on track. But in New York, where she has filed an employment complaint against the Met, she is not alone.
Hibla Gerzmava, another Russian singer, is also gone from the Met roster, presumably for the same reason as Netrebko.
Earlier this month the star German bass René Pape, who starred at the Met last season as the lead in Modest Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" — a character about an authoritarian leader psychologically tortured by deep insecurity — objected to the manner of the company’s participation in New York’s gay pride parade.
He did not use any anti-gay slur, nor did he criticize any LGBTQ individual.
He merely said that the parade participation was "terrible" because it conveyed a tendentious message that differed from his ideas of the purpose of theater.
This, he stated, was a reason for him not to return.
Pape was widely condemned. In an abject apology posted on social media, he excused himself to the limit, blaming depression and alcohol problems for his direct but far from offensive statement of opinion in what used to be a free society.
It is a foregone conclusion that Pape will not return to the Met, though his career in Europe appears to be unscathed.
Now, appropriately enough just after Bastille Day (July 14), the proverbial tumbril is rolling for Netrebko’s husband, the talented tenor Yusif Eyvazov.
Eyvazov’s sin came on social media, where he took issue with the black soprano Angel Blue’s decision to withdraw from performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s "La Traviata," at Italy’s Verona Festival, because its production of another Verdi opera, "Aida," in which Blue was not scheduled to appear, uses blackface.
Blackface is generally uncontroversial in continental Europe, which does not share American cultural connotations of minstrelsy or the controversy around it.
In response to Blue’s withdrawal, Verona’s administration defended blackface’s use in "Aida," which is about an enslaved Ethiopian princess in Egypt, because it could see no other sensible way to stage a traditional production of the opera.
The night before Blue made her announcement, she ironically closed a run of Charles Gounod’s "Faust" at the Paris Opera, a work that includes murder, infanticide, the devil, and, in that particular production, rape, prostitution, and the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, which is presented as a deliberate act.
Eyvazov added that Blue had no objection to blackface in the "Aida" production, as seen in Verona, Italy — when it opened in June, with the Ukrainian soprano Ludmila Monastyrska "blacked up" in the title role.
Blue’s objection curiously coincided with Netrebko’s assumption of the part nearly a month later, though she denies any connection.
Gelb, however, seems to miss no opportunity to purge his diminishing roster of artists. He immediately declared that "There is no room at the Met for artists who are so meanspirited in their thinking," adding, "We’re considering what steps we might take."
With his track record, in which "meanspirited" might well be synonymous with "logical,"
it seems unlikely that Eyvazov will be back at the Met, though as of this writing he remains scheduled to perform in Giacomo Puccini’s "Tosca" there next season.
His fans may well be disappointed once Gelb dusts off the guillotine at Lincoln Center.
In France, where I am currently writing, however, people simply cannot understand why the Met — whose sales fell as low as 44% of seats for some performances last season — cares so much more about politics than art and its own bottom line.
Until that changes, it is to Europe that opera-loving Americans will have to turn to experience art in a free society.
Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University. Read more — Here.
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