Anna Netrebko will not be singing at the Lucerne Culture and Congress Center (KKL) this summer. The soprano was disinvited due to pressure from the Lucerne government.
The reason for this is her alleged closeness to Putin and the Ukraine conference on the Bürgenstock. SRF music editor Theresa Beyer on dealing with politically unpopular artists.
How common is it for government bodies to intervene in the agendas of cultural institutions?
In my experience, it is rather unusual for cantonal or municipal authorities to ask venues to cancel a concert. As a rule, it is the musicians or organizers who make such decisions.
Government councilor Armin Hartmann said: “We are of the opinion that a cultural canton like Lucerne should take a stand.” Is the case so clear?
The case of Anna Netrebko is not so clear and unambiguous. It was different with the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev: In spring 2022, various festivals asked him to take a statement against the war. But he did not react and sided with Putin. He was then unloaded in many places – including from the KKL Lucerne.
Anna Netrebko, on the other hand, has now distanced herself from the war, which is reason enough for numerous European opera houses and festivals to let her perform again. Other organizers canceled her. They continue to miss an explicit distancing from Putin.
Legend:
Netrebko’s concerts repeatedly led to protests: demonstrators in front of the Wiesbaden State Theater during the 2023 May Festival.
Keystone/Helmut Fricke
Where is the limit of what one has to endure, even with music with political content?
The legal limit is where music incites hatred, violates human dignity, is anti-Semitic or racist. But of course there are also ethical and moral limits, as well as individual, emotional ones.
Netrebko would only have sung a harmless potpourri of arias. Nevertheless, it would have been a political concert.
Organizers set the limits very differently. Of course, commercial considerations, audience credibility and safety concerns also play a role.
And on the artists’ side?
The boundaries are fluid there too. To give a concrete example: The Ukrainian composer Viktoria Poleva told me two years ago that she withdrew a premiere in Germany because Russian music was also being played there.
At this point, Poleva felt that the programming was a transgression. She simply couldn’t perform her piece in this context.
How should we all deal with art by people who have different political positions than ourselves?
You have to ask yourself what outweighs: My discomfort with the person’s position or what the music means to me? Can I manage to unite these contradictions within myself? I think the idea that you can ignore the people behind the music is too short-sighted. Because an artist embodied yes the music.
Netrebko would only have sung a harmless potpourri of arias in Lucerne. And yet it would have been a political concert. Not only if Ukrainians had protested in front of the KKL, but also because Netrebko is already symbolically charged as a figure.