Putin’s Maestro and the Limits of Wartime Cultural Exchange

A conductor, seen in wartime as one of the opposition parties, pushed himself from his podium in disgrace.

Another two decades later offered a prestigious position but withdrew under pressure after protests against his ties to a despised foreign regime.

The first, Karl Muck, a German-Swiss maestro, led the Boston Symphony Orchestra until he was arrested and interned in what is now widely regarded as an outrageous example of anti-German hysteria at the start of World War I.

The profound musical legacy of the second—Wilhelm Furtwängler, who never joined the Nazi Party but was essentially its chief conductor, dooming his appointment to the New York Philharmonic—still struggles to get out of his association with Hitler.

How will we feel about Valery Gergiev in a century?

As one of the world’s foremost conductors, he has lost a string of assignments and positions in the past week, including as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, for not denying the war in Ukraine waged by his longtime friend and ally. , President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The rapid denouement of his international career – and the decision of Anna Netrebko, a Russian diva who is one of the biggest stars in opera, to withdraw from performances amid renewed attention to her own ties to Mr Putin – raise a large number of difficult questions.

What is the point at which cultural exchange—always a blur between a humanizing balm and a propaganda tool, a co-option of music’s supposed neutrality—becomes intolerable? What is sufficient distance from authoritarian leadership?

And what is enough rejection, especially in a context where speaking could endanger the safety of artists or their families?

Gergiev, in his quasi-governmental role as general and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, is closer to Furtwängler than to Muck. He has supported Mr Putin in the past and promoted his policies with concerts in Russia and abroad. But when he has spoken – he has remained silent during this latest firestorm – he tended to sound like Furtwängler, longing to concentrate only on scores, saying, “My work is music.”

“Be not a politician, but an exponent of German music, which belongs to all mankind, regardless of politics,” Furtwängler wrote in 1936, in clipped telegram style, withdrawing under pressure from the New York Philharmonic post.

Classical music likes to think of itself this way: floating serenely above politics, in a realm of beauty and unity. His repertoire – most of which was compiled in the distant past – seems isolated from contemporary conflicts. What can Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony do besides good?

But since the invasion of Ukraine, politics and music – an area in which Russian artists have long been stars – have quickly collided. The tours of the Mariinsky Orchestra have been cancelled. On Sunday, the Metropolitan Opera announced it would no longer partner with artists or other organizations that have expressed support for Putin. Presenters in the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands have announced the cancellation of performances by some artists who support Mr Putin.

Mrs. Netrebko had assignments at the Bavarian State Opera cancelledand then announced that she intended to “take a step back for now” and withdraw from her upcoming dates at the Zurich Opera.

Zurich Artistic Director Andreas Homoki noted some of the complexities and welcomed a statement Ms. Netrebko made against the war, but suggested that her failure to condemn Mr Putin put her at odds with the opera’s stance. But Mr Homoki took the trouble to note that his company did not consider it appropriate to judge the decisions and actions of citizens of repressive regimes from the perspective of those living in Western European democracy.

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 with a flag used by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine – initially seemed to issue the kind of statement that Mr Gergiev had missed.

“First of all, 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 now. I want this war to end and people to live in peace.”

Though she conspicuously failed to mention Mr Putin, Ms Netrebko’s words were simple and tender, a needle—love for her country and empathy for another—seemingly strung.

But unfortunately for those of us who have cherished her as a performer, there was more. On the next slide, she added that “it is not right to force artists, or any public figure for that matter, to publicly express their political views and denounce their homeland.”

“I am not a political person,” she wrote, echoing the Furtwängler perspective. “I am not an expert in politics. I am an artist and my goal is to unite people across political divides.”

She then added to her Instagram story, in addition to heart and praying hands emojis, text that used an expletive in reference to her Western critics, saying they were “as bad as blind aggressors.”

So much for threading the needle. And a series of posts over the next few days, later deleted, only clouded the waters further.

What might have softened the criticism, instead fueled it. The politically outspoken pianist Igor Levit, born in Russia, 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 citizenship, from taking responsibility, from being an adult.”

“PS,” he added: “And never, ever bring music and you’re musician as an excuse. Don’t offend the art.”

The Met, where Ms. Netrebko will star in Puccini’s “Turandot” this spring, seemed to have her in mind — along with a production partnership with Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater — when it made the announcement on Sunday.

“While we strongly believe in the warm friendship and cultural exchange that has long existed between the artists and artistic institutions of Russia and the United States,” the company’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said in a video statement, “we can no longer participate with artists or institutions that support or are sponsored by Putin.”

It is true: Mrs. Netrebko is not a politician, expert or otherwise. In this she is different from Mr. Gergiev, who has repeatedly and explicitly served as a government propagandist, conducted battlefield concerts in 2008 in South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia, and in Palmyra after the Syrian site was recaptured by Syrian and Russian forces. in 2016. In Ossetia, he even conducted Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” symphony, completed during the German siege of that city in World War II and as much a musical memorial as there is to Russian suffering.

But Mrs. Netrebko is definitely a political actor – the kind of “political person” she denies being. In the past, she has expressed her political views time and again, in public, albeit vaguely. (She said she was taken aback when she handed over the separatist flag in that 2014 photo with a separatist leader, which was taken after she made a donation to him for a theater in a separatist-controlled area; that donation, she said at the time. claimed, was ‘not about politics’.)

Mrs. Netrebko can of course hold any flag she likes. But she shouldn’t be surprised that there are consequences. In January 2015, after her Met performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” conducted by Mr. Gergiev, a protester climbed the stage at her curtain call and unfolded a banner calling them “active contributors to Putin’s war on Ukraine”.

The Met, which opened a performance with the Ukrainian national anthem this week, has left vague how it plans to monitor its new test. But I hope the company will look at the existing record rather than demand new, public words from artists who have legitimate security reasons to remain silent about Mr. Putin and his actions. Producing – coercive, some might say – affirmative statements hardly seems the right way to counter authoritarianism.

But Ms. Netrebko’s biting irritation at the idea that any explanation can be expected from her makes it difficult to sympathize with the position she finds herself in, or with any of those legitimate reasons she might have to criticize her. against the Russian government. She could have said she was against war and would leave it at that, but instead she basically ignored those words of peace by making it all about her.

No one has asked her to denounce her country – only the aggression, which many inside and outside Russia have bravely resisted. (Whether or not to perform in the country has quickly become a fraught issue for many artists, Russian and not.)

Even as the strong character of Putin’s rule and his extraterritorial plans became increasingly apparent over the past two decades, the Met continued to involve Mr. Gergiev and Ms. Netrebko, and no doubt other artists who supported and still support the Russian leader. Some believe that the Met and other cultural institutions should have taken these new steps years ago.

I understand the reluctance to move away from idyllic notions of exchange and cooperation, even in the midst of conflict. And I do not share the air of gleeful triumph with which many on social media react to these cultural cancellations. But faced with a leader who now seems completely determined to destabilize the world order, hiring an artist who doesn’t apologetically resemble him would be seen as a step too far.

Sanctions are meant to tax a country’s elite, to drive a wedge between that elite and the leadership. Those sanctions can of course be economic, but also cultural. The Met – along with the Munich Philharmonic and the rest – now imposes them. Hopefully they work. Hopefully they are not too late.

They’ve certainly come fast, even in an era that enjoys lightning-fast deplatforming. The international career of Mr. Gergiev, built up over decades, seems to have been unraveled in just a few days.

He can take no solace in Furtwängler’s example: Several years after World War II, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was also pressured to revoke a position it offered him.

“Now he wants to earn American dollars and American prestige,” said the eminent pianist Arthur Rubinstein at the time. “He doesn’t deserve it either.”