MY SAY: PROTEST COMIQUE AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
The eminent Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, artistic and general director of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater and principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, who is presently touring the United States is being hounded by Ukrainian protesters.
In March of 2014 Gergiev added his name to an open letter which stated: “ We firmly state support for the position of the president of the Russian Federation.” Furthermore, it is alleged that he supports harsh anti gay legislation- an accusation he rebuts in an interview with the New York Times.
The protests culminated on January 29th 2015, when a man carrying a sign criticizing the policies of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia climbed over the orchestra pit and onto the stage at the Metropolitan Opera just as the soprano Anna Netrebko was bowing and accepting applause and flowers after her performance in the opera Iolanta, conducted by Maestro Gergiev. The protester unfurled a poster with a a flag and pictures of Gergiev, Netrebko and Putin with a Hitler mustache which was shown to the audience and performers before he was escorted offstage.
My first thought was of the appalling lax security of an Opera House where such an act could occur .
I am a great believer in protests. I strongly supported the protest against the Klinghoffer Opera, and I have sympathy for the people of Ukraine. But, here is a bit of unsolicited advice. Choose your protests wisely. Hounding and harassing a great conductor is fatuous. Furthermore, putting a Hitler mustache on Putin is questionable. Russia has its own poster boy for genocidal cruelty in Stalin.
In Russia, performers and musicians can have careers ruined by state funders and censors. In America performers are free to criticize and dabble in politics.
In 2008 the late conductor Lorin Maazel took the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to Pyongyang, North Korea. Before departing, he wrote a self-congratulatory editorial for the Wall Street Journal (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120347076630878735) in which he stated: “If we are to be effective in bringing succor to the oppressed, many languishing in foreign gulags, the U.S. must claim an authority based on an immaculate ethical record, toughened by economic clout. Woe to the people we are trying to help if we end up in a glass house.”
He liked that glass house image and repeated it again:” “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw bricks, should they? Is our reputation all that clean when it comes to prisoners and the way they are treated? Have we set an example to be emulated all over the world?”
Actually Pyongyang played the New York Philharmonic – not the other way around and Maazel played useful idiot to one of the most brutal regimes in the world. The “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-il, did not attend the concert .He was busy implementing his pastime of torture, murder and starvation and speeding up development of nuclear weapons which continues to this day.
No protests greeted Mr. Maazel on his return to the podium in America, and he continued a celebrated music career until 2014 when he died.
Maestro Gergiev is an artist and arguably one of the finest conductors in the world- not a politician with any influence on Putin whose admittedly harsh policies have been enabled in this country by our hapless State Department and administration.
Hillary Clinton who recently reinvented herself as a hawk on Russia, cannot airbrush her record as Secretary of State. In 2009, she “reset” relations with Russia that included an arms treaty. She may run for the White House in 2016. Now, there is a protest for Ukrainian Americans.
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