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The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/RadiantDreamer_ on 2023-09-15 18:18:28.
Protesters enraged as Berlin State Opera lifts ban on Russian-born soprano
Submitted 3 years ago by bot@lemmit.online [bot] to worldnews@lemmit.online
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 3 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Berlin State Opera has defended its decision to allow the Russian-born soprano Anna Netrebko to perform on its stage despite protests from people who claim she has failed to unambiguously distance herself from Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine.
But its general director, Matthias Schulz, has said in a lengthy and unusual statement that he is convinced that she has distanced herself adequately from the Putin regime and has described the war as an unprovoked invasion by Russia.
In a statement from March 2022, Netrebko said she “expressly condemned the war on Ukraine”, and insisted it was false to describe her as a supporter of Putin, saying she had met him only a handful of times, and that she was financially independent of the Russian government and paid her taxes in Austria.
“The reality is that Netrebko has never explicitly distanced herself from her support of the Putin regime in the past, only spoken about the fact that her behaviour was falsely interpreted, as well as styling herself as an apolitical fighter of ‘Russophobie’, to coin a Kremlin battle cry, used to delegitimise every criticism of Russia.”
Netrebko’s opponents have repeatedly pointed to her audiences with Putin, including her decoration by him as a cultural figurehead, and her 2014 appearance in St Petersburg with a representative from the Russian-occupied Donbas region of Ukraine, carrying a flag of the pseudo-state Novorossiya.
The parallels between Verdi’s opera and reality have been pointed out by myriad pundits on social media, with the programme notes describing how the Macbeths “literally walk over dead bodies” to fulfil their ambitions.
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