Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Thursday, Feb. 24. Before the weekend was out, the international career of conductor Valery Gergiev — a longtime associate and champion of Russian President Vladimir Putin — was in tatters.
很明显, this development ranked very far down on the list of notable consequences of the week’s events. Compared with the waves of death, displacement, human suffering and political disruption unleashed by the invasion, its impact on the world of operatic and orchestral music scarcely registered.
Still, the swiftness and severity of Gergiev’s putative downfall (which is still very much in progress at this writing, and whose scope is impossible to predict) provided a fascinating parable about the intertwining of art and politics. It turns out that being an artist — even a great one, as Gergiev undoubtedly is — does not afford you a free pass when the demands of history come into play. Sooner or later, we are, all of us, great and small, answerable for our actions.
In the case of Gergiev and a handful of his Russian musical colleagues, complicity with the misdeeds of the Putin regime extends back a considerable way. The friendship between the two men is decades old, and Putin’s backing is thought to have been an essential component of Gergiev’s long tenure at the helm of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre.
At various points in the 2010s, Gergiev’s touring appearances in the U.S. (including San Francisco) were greeted with small, scattered demonstrations, usually in protest against anti-gay actions by the Russian government. But the recent outcry has been more virulent and widespread.
As it happened, Gergiev was scheduled to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in three concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall the weekend after the invasion. Within hours, the hall’s management had announced that he would not appear (Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the hyperactive music director of both the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, swooped in as a last-minute substitute). Pianist Denis Matsuev, another close Putin ally, was also dropped.
The dominoes continued to topple over the subsequent days. La Scala, the famed opera house in Milan, canceled a scheduled appearance after Gergiev ignored an ultimatum that he denounce the Ukraine invasion. Orchestras in Munich and Rotterdam with whom Gergiev has official posts issued similar demands, which seem unlikely to be met.
By Sunday, Feb. 27, Gergiev’s manager, Marcus Felsner, had issued a statement cutting ties with the conductor over what he called the “criminal war waged by the Russian regime against the democratic and independent nation of Ukraine,” and Gergiev’s refusal to publicly distance himself from the Russian government.
#ukraine#valerygergievpic.twitter.com/KU9gLhYzfW
— Felsner Artists (@felsnerartists)February 27, 2022
At the moment, it’s hard to see how Gergiev can recover his stature as an artist of international repute.
What is happening here represents just the latest, though perhaps the most glaring, iteration of an age-old conundrum. What expectations do we have —shouldwe have — for artists and other ostensibly nonpolitical actors in a time of crisis? Is it incumbent on literally everyone to declare their allegiances?
The problem with that framing, though, is that sitting on the sidelines is also a choice. Silence in the face of injustice represents an acquiescence to that injustice.
To claim, as many do, that art should “transcend” politics — that it exists in a realm where the push and pull of human conflict have no relevance — represents an impoverished view of both politics and art. To the extent that art has any bearing on the world, it’s necessarily political.
Yet the case of Gergiev and other Putin acolytes is actually more straightforward. That was made clear in a charged online interaction between soprano Anna Netrebko — who in the past has been vocal in her defense of the Russian government and is also now facing blowback from opera companies — and pianist Igor Levit.
Netrebko posted a series of statements onher Instagram account, voicing opposition to the war but adding, “forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right. … Like many of my colleagues, I am not a political person.”
Levit’s reply, which named no one but left no doubt about the target, was swift and merciless.
“Being a musician does not free you from being a citizen, from taking responsibility, from being a grown up,” he wrote, before adding, “And never, never bring up music and your being a musician as an excuse. Do not insult art.”
Other artists have found a path to registering objection against the invasion. ChoreographerAlexei Ratmansky, most notably, abandoned a new work he was in the midst of creating in Moscow with the Bolshoi Ballet and promptly left the country. A group ofRussian visual artistswithdrew their work from the Venice Biennale in protest.
There will be consequences for all of them, but nothing on the scale of what has befallen Gergiev. For years, he reaped the benefits of his political partnership with Putin. Now that the bill has come due, it will be hard for him to claim he didn’t know what he had signed on to.