A conductor, considered one of the opposition in wartime, was disgraced from his podium.
Another, two decades later, offered a prestigious position, only to step down under pressure after protests over his ties to a despised foreign regime.
The first, Carl Mook, a German-Swiss maestro, conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra until he was arrested and interned, in what is now widely seen as a shameful example of anti-German hysteria at the start of World War I.
The deep musical legacy of the latter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, who never joined the Nazi party but was essentially its court conductor, condemning his appointment to the New York Philharmonic, is still struggling to break out of his relationship with Hitler.
How will we think about Valeri Gergiev in a century?
One of the world’s leading conductors, he lost a series of commitments and positions in the last week alone, including as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic because he did not renounce the war in Ukraine led by his longtime friend and ally, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. .
The rapid unraveling of his international career – and the decision of Anna Netrebko, a Russian diva who is one of the opera’s biggest stars, to retire from renewed attention amid renewed attention to her own ties to Mr Putin – raises a number of challenges. questions.
What is the moment when cultural exchange – always blurring between being a humanizing balm and an instrument of propaganda, co-opting the supposed neutrality of music – becomes unbearable? What is enough distance from authoritarian leadership?
And what is enough denial, especially in a context where speaking can endanger the safety of artists or their families?
Mr. Gergiev, with his quasi-governmental role as general and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, is closer to Furtwängler than to Muk. In the past, he has supported Mr Putin and promoted his policy with concerts in Russia and abroad. But when he spoke — he remained silent during this last storm of fire — he tended to sound like Furtwängler, who longed to focus only on the scores and said, “My job is music.”
“I am not a politician, but a representative of German music, which belongs to all mankind, regardless of politics,” Furtwängler wrote in 1936 in the style of a cut telegram, retiring under pressure from the post office of the New York Philharmonic.
Classical music likes to think of itself in this way: it meanders calmly over politics, in the realm of beauty and unity. His repertoire – so much of it was composed in the distant past – seems isolated from today’s conflicts. What can Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony do but good?
But politics and music – a field in which Russian performers have long been stars – quickly clashed after the invasion of Ukraine. The tours of the Mariinsky Orchestra have been canceled. On Sunday, the Metropolitan Opera announced it would no longer engage with performers or other organizations that have expressed support for Mr Putin. Leaders in the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands have announced the cancellation of performances by some artists who support Putin.
Ms. Netrebko had engagements at the Bavarian State Opera canceledand then announced that he planned to “retire from a performance for the time being” by withdrawing from his upcoming meetings at the Zurich Opera.
Zurich’s artistic director Andreas Homoki noted some of the complexity, welcoming Ms. Netrebko’s statement against the war, but suggested that her failure to convict Mr Putin contradicted the opera’s position. But Mr Homoki tries to point out that his company does not “consider it appropriate to judge the decisions and actions of the citizens of repressive regimes from the point of view of those living in Western European democracies”.
In her first public statement about the war, in an Instagram post on Saturday morning, Ms. Netrebko – who has long been criticized for her ties to Mr Putin and was photographed in 2014 holding a flag used by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine – initially it seemed that he was issuing a statement that was missing from Mr. Gergiev.
“First, I am against this war. So far so good.
“I am Russian and I love my country,” Ms. Netrebko continued, “but I have many friends in Ukraine and the pain and suffering is breaking my heart right now. I want this war to end and people to be able to live in peace. “
Updated
March 3, 2022, 5:28 pm ET
Although he apparently did not mention Mr. Putin, Ms. Netrebko’s words were simple and gentle, a needle – love for the homeland and empathy for another – seemingly strung.
But unfortunately for those of us who value her as a performer, there was more. In the next slide, she added that “forcing artists or any public figure to express their political views publicly and condemn their homeland is not right.”
“I am not a political figure,” she wrote, echoing Furtwängler’s view. “I am not an expert in politics. I am an artist and my goal is to unite people through political divisions. “
She then added to her Instagram story, along with a heart and emojis with prayer hands, a text that uses swear words at her Western critics and said they were “evil as blind aggressors.”
So much for the incision of the needle. And a series of publications in the following days, which were later deleted, only obscured the water further.
What could smooth out the criticism instead inflamed it. The Russian-born politically outspoken pianist Igor Levitt did not mention Ms. Netrebko by name in his own Instagram post on Sunday morning, but wrote: “Being a musician does not free you from being a citizen, from taking responsibility. , from an adult. “
“PS,” he added: “And never, ever mention music and being a musician as an excuse. Don’t offend art. “
The Met, where Ms. Netrebko is set to star in Puccini’s Turandot this spring, seems to be referring to her – along with a production partnership with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow – when she made her announcement on Sunday.
“Although we strongly believe in the warm friendships and cultural exchanges that have long existed between artists and art institutions in Russia and the United States,” said Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, in a video statement, “we can no longer engage with artists or institutions. who support or are supported by Putin. “
It is true: Ms. Netrebko is not a politician, an expert or anyone else. In this, she is unlike Mr. Gergiev, who has repeatedly and explicitly worked as a government propagandist, leading concerts on the battlefield in South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia, in 2008 and in Palmyra, after this Syrian site he was returned by Syrian and Russian forces in 2016. In Ossetia, he even conducted Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, which ended during the German siege of the city during World War II and was filled with a musical memorial as much as about Russian suffering.
But Ms. Netrebko is certainly a political actor – a kind of “political figure” she denies being. Over and over again, she has expressed her political views, publicly, albeit vaguely. (She said she was caught unprepared when she was handed the separatist flag in this 2014 photo with a separatist leader, which was taken after she gave him a donation for a theater in a separatist-controlled region; donation, she claimed at the time, was “not related to politics”.)
Mrs. Netrebko can hold whatever flag she wants, of course. But it should come as no surprise that there are consequences. In January 2015, following the performance of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta under the baton of Mr. Gergiev, a protester took to the stage during her call and unfurled a banner calling them “active participants in Putin’s war against Ukraine.” .
The Met, which opened a show this week with the Ukrainian national anthem, has left unclear the way it intends to control its new test. But I hope that the company will look at the existing record, instead of demanding new, public words from artists who may have legitimate safety reasons to remain silent about Mr Putin and his actions. Extraction – coercion, some may say – affirmative claims hardly seems to be the right way to oppose authoritarianism.
The war between Russia and Ukraine: key things you need to know
Map 1 of 4
One city has been captured. Russian troops gained control of Kherson, the first Ukrainian city to be conquered during the war. Overtaking Kherson is important because it allows the Russians to control most of Ukraine’s southern coast and push west toward the city of Odessa.
Russian convoy. Satellite images show a Russian military convoy stretching 40 miles north of Kyiv, with burning homes and buildings nearby. Experts fear the convoy could be used to encircle and cut off the capital or to carry out a full-scale attack.
But Ms. Netrebko’s scathing irritation at the idea that any statement from her can be expected makes it difficult to feel sympathy for the position she is in, or for any of those legitimate reasons why she may have to defended his criticism of the Russian government. She could have said she opposed the war and left it at that, but instead she virtually denied those words of peace, doing everything in her power.
No one has asked her to condemn her country – only its aggression, which many have bravely resisted in Russia and abroad. (Whether or not to perform in the country quickly became a difficult question for many Russian and non-Russian artists.)
Even as the strong nature of Mr Putin’s rule and his extraterritorial intentions became clearer over the past two decades, the Metropolitan continued to engage Mr Gergiev and Mrs Netrebko and undoubtedly other artists who have supported and still support Russian leader. Some believe that the Metropolitan and other cultural institutions should have taken these new steps years ago.
I understand the reluctance to step away from idyllic notions of exchange and cooperation, even in the face of conflict. And I do not share the mood of joyful triumph with which many on social media react to these cultural cancellations. But facing a leader who now seems completely intent on destabilizing the global order, engaging an artist who does not apologize to him can be seen as a step too far.
Sanctions are designed to burden the elite of a country, to drive a wedge between that elite and the leadership. These sanctions can be economic, of course, but they can also be cultural. Matt – along with the Munich Philharmonic and the others – is now imposing them. I hope they work. I hope they are not late.
They certainly came quickly, even in an era that enjoys lightning-fast platforms. Mr Gergiev’s international career, built over decades, seems to have unraveled in just a few days.
He cannot seek solace in Furtwängler’s example: A few years after World War II, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was also forced to resign.
“Now he wants to win American dollars and American prestige,” said then-prominent pianist Arthur Rubinstein. “He doesn’t deserve it either.”