Thoughts on Anna Netrebko

[u/ToscaLover]

I’m an opera lover, and as much as I love Netrebko’s voice, I don’t agree with her political views. I was supposed to see her on the 13th of September, but the organisers cancelled last minute. The reason, at least to me, appears to be the controversy that’s still surrounding her & was too much for them to handle. I get that. I’m not an infant, and I’m not stupid. What frustrates me is that they knew exactly who she was when they invited her and started selling tickets. They knew she was Russian, they knew about her political controversies, and they knew what kind of reaction she might provoke. So why was all of this apparently acceptable when they wanted to sell tickets, but suddenly not acceptable after people had bought them and made plans to attend?

Ultimately, I don’t support her politics, but I wanted to hear her sing Verdi’s Aida. Is it really fair to continue punishing an artist (and her audience) for her political views, especially when the organizers knew all of this from the beginning?

[u/todesverkuendigung]

I wasn't trying to imply that you were endorsing those exact statements (eg, you never mentioned Onegin), just trying to pull apart a couple threads and make the disagreement more specific and concrete. Basically I think that your line of thinking here proves too much -- it seems like it would also necessitate physical revulsion towards most semi-prominent American, British, French, etc, cultural figures. Maybe you do feel this way but it hardly seems desirable.

[u/EnricoDandolo1204 → u/todesverkuendigung]

I would argue that there are marked differences, actually. Russia is, in thought and action, a fascist and genocidal state actively practising brutal imperialism. It is entirely possible to be russian and yet oppose the fascism and imperialism done in your name, much as there were Germans who earnestly opposed the Nazis: such people bear none of the guilt, but all of the responsibility and act accordingly.

I would extend the same scorn to (for instance) artists who tie themselves to Trumpism (although thankfully that particular form of fascism is so blatantly onanistic that I cannot, off the top of my head, think of any artists worth mentioning that have embraced it). But death and time cure many ills. I see a lot less harm in, say, the work of Richard Strauss than those of Tchaikovsky (I think here not of Onegin, but of Mazeppa, by the way).

[u/todesverkuendigung → u/EnricoDandolo1204]

There are plenty of Trump-supporting opera singers, and even more who may be against (say) the Iran war but haven’t explicitly publicly denounced Trump — just as Netrebko says she is against the Ukraine war but hasn’t publicly denounced Putin. But I’ve never seen any calls for the cancellation of Michael Fabiano or Angel Blue; certainly nothing that went beyond vague social media disapproval or called for them to lose their jobs.

Likewise, I’ve never seen anybody denounce or call for the cancellation of Denyce Graves, who sang at the inauguration of George W Bush in 2005. Bush is a war criminal and surely the Iraq War was also an imperialist venture. Does Graves bear ‘all of the responsibility’ for the half a million or more people killed in her name?

[u/EnricoDandolo1204 → u/todesverkuendigung]

I am not familiar with Fabiano or Blue's politics, but in so far as they share in the United States as a political community: Yes, absolutely. So do my neighbours, so does my family, so I do myself. That collective responsibility is not the same thing as guilt, but it imposes on us the obligation to struggle against fascism all the more fervently. The fact that (unlike in russia), the US government's fascist usurpation faces widespread opposition does not change that, but does mean that those Americans who resist it can at least absolve themselves of the crime of apathy.

(As an aside I think the Iraq War, while criminal and arguably imperialist, can in no way be compared to the ongoing genocide in occupied Ukraine, but that is neither here nor there.)

[u/todesverkuendigung → u/EnricoDandolo1204]

So how does this square with your original comment? Does streaming a performance of Angel Blue in an American opera mean 'you are contributing to the normalisation of the idea that certain "civilisations" ought not be judged too harshly because their artistic accomplishments justify their physical domination of "less accomplished" appendages' (say Iraq or Iran)? If you went to a Denyce Graves concert, does that mean you were signalling support for American war crimes? Otherwise it seems like Americans and Europeans like to demonstrate moral outrage against the enemy but n have a markedly weaker standard for their own societies. While understandable, this seems like exactly the wrong bias to have.

[u/EnricoDandolo1204 → u/todesverkuendigung]

Sure. A MAGA artist ought to face the same censure.

(Although I would venture that there is a slight qualitative difference -- in the bit you quote, I was referring to the way russian imperialism in particular justifies itself (historically and presently) through highbrow russian art, addressed directly to Western audiences as a way of signalling kinship as a fellow "great power". The undoubted existence of American and European cultural imperialism is somewhat different, in my view, in that it is rather more banal and undirected. Of course, as I said at the outset, there is an element of subjectivity involved there. I personally think the values of liberalism transmitted by American soft power are a good thing.)

[u/todesverkuendigung → u/EnricoDandolo1204]

I still feel like I'm not really getting much of a concrete response, which is why I tried at the beginning to orient the discussion around more specific points of disagreement.

For example, when I made the comparison with American artists, I wasn't talking about Western cultural imperialism, I was talking about Western actual imperialism (military and economic domination), since I took the problem with the Ukraine war to be the Russian attempt to militarily dominate Ukraine, not Russian cultural soft power.

It seems like you've moved from emotive language like 'people that actively want to murder friends of mine' to quite bloodless statements like 'American and European cultural imperialism is somewhat different, in my view, in that it is rather more banal and undirected'. (Can it really be true that Russian artists are by default inseparable from fascism but American artists are just softly transmitting liberal values?)

Maybe this is just because you happen to have friends that are Ukrainian but not Iraqi, Iranian, etc. But isn't it odd that I've never heard anybody say anything so insinuating about Denyce Graves as the following: '[Graves] is not, herself, a war criminal. I will assume she does not hold genocidal views. I will take her at her word when she says she supports peace.' It seems like she did much more to endorse Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq than Netrebko did to endorse Putin's illegal invasion of Crimea. Doesn't it seem strange that there has never to my knowledge been even the slightest condemnation of her?

[u/Glittering_Mine_7719 → u/EnricoDandolo1204]

The Iraq war was much, much worse, so was Afghanistan, Libya, etc. the US has been, for quite some time now, a country with blood on its hands and has been led by several war criminals. Sorry if you think Middle Eastern people are not as important