In the fall of 2014, the Metropolitan Opera and its general manager, Peter Gelb, held the line against the politicization of the arts when gay activists demanded the Met take a stand against laws against homosexuality that had been recently promulgated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Gelb wrote in Bloomberg to say that it would be “inappropriate” for an arts organization to dedicate performances to a political cause even if it was one, such as gay rights, that the company supported. He also made clear he would not countenance any effort to coerce Russian artists to repudiate Putin.
The performers then in the crosshairs of the activists were two of the biggest stars in the world of classical music: conductor Valery Gergiev and soprano Anna Netrebko. Both were public supporters of Putin and received arts honors from his government. But while hundreds demonstrated in Lincoln Center in front of the Met on its 2014 opening night when Gergiev and Netrebko performed in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, the company stood by its stars. And when a few people sought to disrupt the performance, they were ejected to the cheers of those in attendance who held to the idea that music should not be held hostage to any cause.
That same month, he was equally tough in rejecting the demands from the Jewish community that the Met not stage The Death of Klinghoffer, an opera that rationalized a Palestinian terrorist murder of an elderly American, on the grounds that artistic freedom was at stake despite the highly offensive nature of the piece.
That stand was in keeping with the notion that the arts transcended politics, a notion that had been almost universally upheld by classical musicians throughout the Cold War. During the dark days of Soviet oppression of what were then called “captive nations” — Ukraine and other communist satellite states — as well as brutal oppression of political dissidents and refuseniks, the arts world generally disdained any effort to join protests. To the contrary, musicians and institutions eagerly sought out opportunities to perform in Russia and to welcome Soviet artists to the United States with no questions asked about their views about communist tyranny.
This stand even extended to ex-Nazis such as superstar conductor Herbert von Karajan who was welcomed everywhere in the West during that same era with remembrances of his time as a party member and Joseph Goebbels’s favorite musician being considered in bad taste by those who wanted to celebrate his admittedly great artistry.
Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the thought that arts groups should take human rights concerns into consideration was thought to be hopelessly parochial. When in 2008 the New York Philharmonic performed in North Korea, arguably the most oppressive state in the world, it was widely applauded for contributing to the alleged breaking down of barriers between nations, though the visit did the tortured people of North Korea no good and profited the orchestra.
But as with so much else in our culture, politicizing the arts has gone from being considered unthinkable to normal. And Gergiev and Netrebko have, thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, been made to pay the price for this change. Soon after Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, Gelb announced that the Met would cut ties with artists who “support Putin or are supported by him.”
Netrebko, a fixture of the Met for two decades who is widely considered to be the biggest star in opera today, announced to her approximately three-quarters of a million Instagram followers that she was against the war: “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.”
That should have given her a pass from even the most aggressive Putin critics. But it wasn’t good enough for the Met, which stated her record of being comfortable with the Putin regime required her to denounce Putin personally. Doing that would have required Netrebko, a resident of New York and Vienna who is not active in Russian politics but does have family in Russia, to make herself a permanent exile of the country she calls herself a “patriot” of. It would have been to ask her to make herself and loved ones a target of a man who has had critics murdered both inside his country and abroad. Apparently, this is the “liberal” world’s demand of an artist.
Gelb summarily dismissed her from performances for the next two seasons at the Met. If that wasn’t enough to demonstrate his devotion to the cause of the moment, his replacement for Netrebko in her much-anticipated company debut in the title role of Puccini’s Turandot this spring will be Liudmyla Monastyrska, a far less respected singer who has the virtue of being Ukrainian. That Netrebko had also said that she opposed pressure on artists to make political stands was enough for one New York Times critic to write that sympathy for her plight was impossible and justified her being canceled in New York as well as from other engagements in Switzerland and Germany.
Gergiev, who as a member of the Ossetian minority in Georgia is thankful to Putin for his support of the breakaway republic in that province, was also fired by a German orchestra and now has gone from being the most sought-after conductor in classical music to being treated as a pariah outside Russia.
The pair were among the most famous victims of a surge of anger at Russians, but they were far from the only ones. A 20-year-old Russian pianist, Alexander Malofeev, who has condemned the war, had his North American concert tour canceled. The Annapolis Symphony in Maryland canceled an appearance by Russian violinist Vadim Repin because he was “apolitical.”
Some called for similar cancellations of Russian hockey players such as the Washington Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin, who is an avowed Putin supporter. But, to date, the influence of political fashion in the sports world has not been sufficient to achieve that goal. However, in Britain, this summer’s Wimbledon tennis tournament has announced that it won’t allow anyone to compete who will not give assurances that they condemn Putin, which may mean that the reigning U.S. Open champion, Daniil Medvedev, could be excluded.
Outrage against Putin is justified, as is sympathy for Ukraine. But as bars make a show of pouring out Russian vodka (even if it might have been manufactured elsewhere) or changing their names to avoid any connection to Moscow, the backlash against Russians is reminiscent of the moment in 2003 when some Americans fumed about France’s refusal to support the American invasion of Iraq by renaming french fries “freedom fries.” The same thing happened nearly a century earlier when anti-German sentiment during the First World War led to the rechristening of sauerkraut as “liberty cabbage.” Even a Welsh orchestra canceled a performance of Tchaikovsky.
But while wars often lead to heightened emotions and irrational reactions, what we’re now seeing must also be understood as the latest example of how virtue-signaling has become so pervasive in recent years. In that sense, the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag has replaced ubiquitous images and posts that showed support for the Black Lives Matter movement and then for coronavirus lockdowns and mask or vaccine mandates.
It is also related to the way otherwise cash-starved arts organizations have been pressured to hire “diversity, equity, and inclusion” officers to police their artistic choices. These commissars are dedicated to pushing political stands. The current atmosphere has been also influenced by the way Russia and Ukraine were employed as political cudgels against former President Donald Trump. The issue of the war can be understood as just another matter of moral fashion for people who always go along with the popular cause and attack those who won’t, whether the cause in fashion happens to be good or bad.
While the Met claims it isn’t conducting a witch hunt and doesn’t seek to question artists about their stands, that’s exactly what they’re doing. It seems to have never occurred to Met moralists or their counterparts at other arts organizations to bother with consistency and question Chinese artists about their opinions about Xi Jinping’s tyrannical government and its policy of genocide against the Uyghurs. It’s not about morality. It’s about moral panic.
Jonathan Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org. Follow him at: @jonathans_tobin.
