Before the start of her great career 25 years ago, Anna Netrebko gave the second orange in Sergei Prokofiev’s opera “The Love for Three Oranges”; a recording has been preserved. Its conductor was called Valery Gergiev. Since then, Netrebko and Gergiev have achieved world fame – and now have similar problems because of their proximity to Russia’s head of state Vladimir Putin; after all, they are his best-known artistic figureheads in the West.
Music houses in Milan, Munich, Baden-Baden and Hamburg are pressuring Gergiev to take a stand against Putin’s war in Ukraine. Netrebko has less serious problems. Because, firstly, she doesn’t have her own opera house to finance (like Gergiev with the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg), secondly, she lives in Vienna with an Austrian second passport. But her proximity to Putin is also provocative again and again. Netrebko celebrated her 50th birthday in the Kremlin last year, campaigned for Putin’s re-election in 2012 and seven years ago posed with a Donetsk separatist leader waving the “Novorussian” flag, the symbol of breakaway eastern Ukraine, the photo can be found everywhere on the web and for many, it is inextricably linked to her name.
Now, unlike Gergiev, Netrebko has made a statement on the Ukraine war, in which Putin and his role are left out. She describes herself as an “apolitical person”. She is “a Russian and loves” her country, “but I have many friends in Ukraine and the pain and suffering breaks my heart. I want this war to stop and people can live in peace. I hope so me and for that I pray”. In addition, she was against “forcing artists or any public figure to make their political views public and to insult their fatherland”. With that she should allude to the demands on Gergiev.
This Wednesday there is a concert in the Elbphilharmonie
The statement is no coincidence. Netrebko has to fear that her performances will also be canceled and that there will be protests against her pro-Putin stance. That could be the case tomorrow, Wednesday, when she is supposed to perform with her singer husband Yusif Eyvazov in the Elbphilharmonie. A look at the most expensive ticket (440.35 euros) makes it clear that Anna Netrebko is not only a musical and political phenomenon, but also an economic one. An audience only pays such prices for the stars among the stars, for Anna Netrebko, maybe Jonas Kaufmann, formerly also Plácido Domingo. Anyone who commits Netrebko can make a lot more money than with other singers. After two years of the pandemic, this plays a much bigger role for organizers than it used to. Cancellations are all the more bitter now.
20 years ago, Netrebko had his international breakthrough at the Salzburg Festival. There was a big, warm voice that flowed effortlessly through the huge Felsenreitschule, Netrebko acted carefree and playful. No sign of politics. Since then, everyone has wanted to hear this woman. She doses her performances, concentrating on the Italian and Russian romantic repertoire. Christian Thielemann persuaded her to play Richard Wagner’s Elsa. But that was an exception, she doesn’t like the German repertoire, probably because of the language.
The fact that she can effortlessly sing her partners to the wall and at the same time doesn’t have it that way with the fast notes: Both were unmistakable in the 2005 Salzburg “Traviata”. The fans don’t blame her for the fact that she increasingly celebrates her roles. Because Netrebko’s voice speaks directly to the emotions of her listeners, who can only do one thing: cheer and cheer again. All the more disturbing that boos could now be heard at La Scala in Milan. Were they for her singing, her political stance or the Netrebko package as a whole? The carefree times as Orange may be over.