Russian soprano Anna Netrebko has quit New York’s Metropolitan Opera after management ordered her to “repudiate her public support” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a statement Thursday, the iconic opera company said Netrebko had “withdrawn from her next performances at the Met” in Puccini’s ‘Turandot’ and Verdi’s ‘Don Carlo’, after “improper” with the company’s request that it “repudiate his public support for Vladimir Putin”.
Two days earlier, Netrebko posted an Instagram post calling on Russia to end what she called “this senseless war of aggression” in Ukraine.
However, Met management wanted the Russian diva to go a step further and personally denounce Putin, with a source telling the Guardian that the company had repeatedly pressured her to do so.
“It’s a great artistic loss for the Met and for the opera,” said Met chief executive Peter Gelb. “Anna is one of the greatest singers in Met history, but with Putin killing innocent victims in Ukraine, there was no way forward.”
Netrebko, who has performed in nearly 200 performances at the Met, will be replaced in “Turandot” by Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska, while a replacement for her role in “Don Carlo” has yet to be announced.
Netrebko received the People’s Artist of Russia honour from Putin in 2008, and in 2014 donated one million rubles (then $18,500) to rebuild the damaged Donetsk Opera House during the fighting between the pro-independence and Ukrainian forces. Although Netrebko has come under fire in the west for posing with separatist leaders in Donetsk, she insisted she had “nothing to do with politics.”
In addition to the harsh economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and the EU, companies and private organizations have announced their own crackdowns on Russia.
Amid a leak of Western brands from Russia, stores in the United States pulled Russian vodka from their shelves, the International Cat Federation banned Russian-bred and owned cats from its exhibits, and Russian companies around the world have been targeted by vandals.
Netrebko is not the only icon of Russian high culture to have lost his job in this climate. Conductor Valery Gergiev was fired from his job at the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this week after refusing a request from Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter to “distancing himself clearly and unequivocally from Putin’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Gergiev, a Putin associate, had previously been declared undesirable by venues around the world, including New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Edinburgh Festival.
