The Metropolitan Opera in New York will pay Russian soprano Anna Netrebkova more than 200,000 dollars, equivalent to over 4.5 million crowns, as compensation for performances canceled after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Representatives of one of the most famous opera houses in the world have agreed on this with the singer’s lawyers out of court in a closed arbitration, the New York Times found.
Fifty-one-year-old singer in the 2012 election campaign she supported of Russian President Vladimir Putin, later she spoke admiringly of him, for example, in conversation for Newsweek magazine. In the winter of 2014 she visited The Russians annexed the Ukrainian Crimea and financially supported the pro-Russian separatists there. That’s why the New York Opera called on her to distance herself from Putin after the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine last year. they explain New York Times.
The singer remained silent for almost a month before condemning the war and expressing regret for “some of my actions or statements in the past that may have been partly misinterpreted”. However, she refused to distance herself from Vladimir Putin. Opera director Peter Gelb called it insufficient given her Kremlin connections and canceled all 13 of her scheduled New York appearances. There, Nětrebková was to perform, among other things, in productions of Verdi’s operas Don Carlos and The Force of Fate.
Like other artists, however, Nětrebková had a contract with the Met, according to which she must be paid, even if the opera house ultimately did not use her services. The clause is in the contract primarily for artistic reasons. Met lawyers tried to argue in the arbitration that Netrebkova refused to condemn the Russian invasion and that she supported Vladimir Putin. “There can be no doubt that she supported Putin, but she had every right to do so,” replied arbitrator Howard C. Edelman, according to whom even supporting Putin does not excuse the Met’s breach of contractual terms.
However, the arbitrator also fined Netrebková 30,000 dollars for “extremely inappropriate” statements made after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He noticed, among other things, when the singer on the Instagram social network she marked his critics in the West as “despicable human waste” and “the same evil as the blind aggressors”. Netrebková deleted the post after criticism.
According to the New York Times, the singer originally asked for hundreds of thousands of dollars more in the arbitration for planned performances in the coming seasons, for which she has not yet signed a contract, but only discussed them verbally with the Met management. But the arbitrator awarded her compensation only for the contracted performances. The singer received the highest category fee at the Met, around 15 thousand dollars per evening, which is about 337 thousand crowns.
Nětrebková did not comment on the results of the arbitration. “Although we had a properly concluded contract, we thought it immoral to pay Anna Netrebková anything in view of her close relationship with Vladimir Putin,” responded Peter Gelb, director of the Met. He admitted that the interruption of cooperation is a loss for the Met from an artistic point of view, but according to him, neither the staff of the institution nor the majority of subscribers would tolerate the presence of Nětrebková on stage.
After the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Anna Nětrebková began to lose engagement in the West and still faces protests. In the last month, for example, the Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra refused to perform with her. According to the AP agency, pressure from the Taiwanese government, which did not want to send a mixed diplomatic signal to the world that its state orchestra in any way supports Vladimir Putin’s military campaign, contributed to this. Otherwise, Nětrebková’s calendar is starting to fill up again. This Sunday she sang in Milan’s La Scala, and next season she will be at the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Salzburg Easter Festival or a recital on October 16 in the Smetana Hall of the Municipal House in Prague, where she accompanied pianist Pavel Nebolsin.
Video: Anna Nětrebková on archival footage
Anna Nětrebková was one of the greatest stars of the New York Metropolitan Opera. | Video: Associated Press
