Mark Rothko
Untitled ("Blue and Yellow", 1954)
It appears that the international career of Putin-loving conductor Valery Gergiev is over. Here are links to a few articles.
- Critic's Notebook: Putin’s Maestro, and the Limits of Cultural Exchange in Wartime. Zachary Woolfe, NY Times
- For musical artists aligned with Putin, the Ukraine invasion brings a reckoning. Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
- Valery Gergiev and the Nightmare of Music Under Putin. Alex Ross, The New Yorker
- Reporting in The NY Times, all by Javier C. Hernández
Related: Anna Netrebko won't be singing at the Met this season or next, and Peter Gelb says it's hard to imagine a scenario where she returns. The soprano and her husband withdrew this week from some European engagements as well. It's a big deal for the Met; Netrebko is one of the very few singers who reliably sell out the giant theater. Another is no longer appearing with the company for heinous personal behavior.
At the Teatro Real in Madrid, this happened at the last performance of Robert Carsen's Götterdämmerung:
I imagine there was a collective gasp from the audience. The performance, under Pedro Heras-Casado, sounds crackling. Gutrune is Amanda Majeski; Hagen is the great Stephen Milling. Adreas Schager is presumably under the shroud.
All over the world, performers are dedicating performances to Ukraine and Ukrainians; the Ukrainian national anthem is being sung before performances (Metropolitan Opera before Don Carlos; Czech Philharmonic, where Semyon Bychkov denounced the invasion), and so on.
Holy wow. I loathe Wagner, but what a way to make a statement.
ReplyDeleteYeah - it's really something.
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