Monday commemorated opening night for the Metropolitan Opera’s premier of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlos. To commence the event, the cast joined together on stage and sang the Ukrainian national anthem accompanied by the Met Opera Orchestra. The audience rose from their seats as the anthem began in a display of solidarity.
The decision to perform the anthem came from the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, who told NBC New York, “When I woke up this morning, I said why don’t we do the Ukrainian national anthem?”
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Gelb and company agreed it was an important message to send and began learning the lyrics and pronunciations that morning. “This is, after all, an opera that opens with the characters longing for an end to fierce hostilities between two neighboring nations, their civilians suffering the privations caused by the territorial delusions of a tiny few at the top, wrote Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times. “The geopolitical battles fueling the plot’s private agonies seemed more vivid than usual…”
On Sunday, The Met announced it was suspending its relationships with Russian artists and organizations who support President Vladimir Putin. In a video statement posted to Facebook, Gelb expressed solidarity with Ukraine and said: “As an international opera company, the Met can help ring the alarm and contribute to the fight against oppression … we can no longer engage with artists or institutions that support Putin or are supported by him — not until the invasion and killing has been stopped, order has been restored and restitutions have been made.”
The Met’s sentiment is being shared overseas. Russian conductor, Valery Gergiev, has just been fired as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic after being dropped by his management company for failure to oppose Putin publicly. Marcus Felsner, who’d previously represented the 68-year-old Russian, described Gerviev as, “the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency,” reports NPR. Felsner went on to criticize Gergiev because he “will not, or cannot, publicly end his long-expressed support for a regime that has come to commit such crimes.”
Don Carlos will be at the Metropolitan Opera until March 26. Click here for tickets and information.
Will the Met Opera now perform a song/songs calling out the US occupation of a large part of Syria in 2022?
Oh come on now Broad Browed Jay… Comrade Putin just pulled his 275 foot yacht with an indoor pool and a heliport out of a German shipyard to avoid sanctions and you still don’t see the difference?
Obviously a Fox News Trumtardo here folks, thinking he’s smug smart and as shrewd as MTG or Pedo Matt Gaetz. Luckily a very small minority…
I do see a difference: The illegal war in Syria is an extension of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the USA.
So the USA’s position in 2022, and the actions it chose starting in 2003, really 1990/91, are much worse than Russia invading a neighbor in which Neo-Nazis are attacking ethnic Russians after the US and Germany couped the government in Kiev in early 2014.
It’s you who read a lot like Hannity, especially when Sean sells various illegal US wars in the mid-east. Irony.
Jay it seems like you mean well, and I understand this is a complicated topic as yes, I’ve come to understand that there has been a lot of fighting between people who are debatably Russian or Ukrainian in the east. And yes the US operates insane military campaigns all over the world, and it’s important to highlight that it is STILL going on..
but it seems you have read a lot of Russia’s side of this story, as you are here repeating what are basically Kremlin talking points; again I realize that its kind of hard to trust the international military/peace community, but you are siding with Putin over the rest of the world when you say, ‘Putin is right to invade, as Ukraine has been attacking Russians for a decade’.
This is a sovereign nation that is being targeted and attacked with heavy munitions, according to the aforementioned international community, as a means to re-expand and restore historical USSR territory under the Russian flag. If Putin were interested in simply defending Donbass, Russia would not be bombing and occupying major cities in the west. They clearly intend to drive Ukrainians out of Ukraine (as they are) and replace them with Russians in what is either a partial or total takeover of Ukranian land. Believing and speaking as if this is a peacekeeping mission for the Peoples Republic of Donetsk does a major disservice to what most observers can see happening in realtime.
The problem is what you call “Kremlin talking points” are largely fact based.
While, by way of example, the NYT expended stupendous effort in early 2015 denying the early 2014 coup in Ukraine.
You’re right sovereign nations are being targeted with heavy weapons, there’s Ukraine, there’s Syria, and there’s Yemen.
The US is occupying a large part of Syria and not the only party bitting Syria with heavy weapons. And the US + UK are backing the Saudi near genocide in Yemen. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though illegal, looks nothing like what the Saudis are doing in Yemen.
So Gelb and you are being highly hypocritical.
Here’s delusional nonsense you posted:
“They clearly intend to drive Ukrainians out of Ukraine (as they are) and replace them with Russians in what is either a partial or total takeover of Ukranian land. “
The problem is what you call “Kremlin talking points” are largely fact based.
While, by way of example, the NYT expended stupendous effort in early 2015 denying the early 2014 coup in Ukraine.
You’re right sovereign nations are being targeted with heavy weapons, there’s Ukraine, there’s Syria, and there’s Yemen.
The US is occupying a large part of Syria and not the only party bitting Syria with heavy weapons. And the US + UK are backing the Saudi near genocide in Yemen. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though illegal, looks nothing like what the Saudis are doing in Yemen.
So Gelb and you are being highly hypocritical.
Jay- Boring.
It’s “boring” that the Met (Gelb) is siding with Neo-Nazis and only selectively objecting to illegal wars?
I highly commend the Opera and Peter Gelb.
For what? Hypocrisy? Xenophobia? Siding with the Azov Battalion?