Vladimir
Putin’s musical darlings are back in the spotlight — and Ukraine and the EU are
not pleased.
By SEB
STARCEVIC
June 6, 2025
4:00 am CET
Even as
Russia’s armies invaded Europe over the past century, its music spilled through
the continent’s theaters and concert halls, with impassioned conductors and
glamorous sopranos becoming the leading ambassadors of Russian cultural might.
When the
Soviet Union fell, Russia’s operas and ballets still held a hallowed place in
Europe; so too after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014. But that all came to a
screeching halt in the winter of 2022, when the Kremlin launched its full-scale
invasion of Ukraine.
In a show of
solidarity with Kyiv, the classical music world canceled Russian concerts,
stopped performing seminal works like The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, and dropped
performers with public ties to President Vladimir Putin — all part of a broader
derussification of the European arts.
Three years
later, however, some of Russia’s biggest stars are quietly returning to
orchestras and stages across Europe. That’s a victory for Moscow, just as
critics say it is hoping to end its global isolation using Russian high art and
culture as a weapon of soft power.
Facing the
Russian returnees, Ukraine and the EU are both calling for the continent’s
prestigious opera houses and theater companies to hold the line against Moscow.
Ukrainian
Culture Minister Mykola Tochytskyi said Europe’s arts scene should “think
twice” before welcoming Russian performers back into the fold, calling it “very
risky” to reintegrate Russian culture while Moscow’s full-scale invasion grinds
on.
“When you
have a Russian active cultural action in [your] country, it’s immediately about
disinformation and about preparing some kind of act of aggression,” he said.
“This is our own experience.”
European
Culture Commissioner Glenn Micallef concurred, telling POLITICO: “European
stages should not be giving any space to those who are supporting this war of
aggression against Ukraine.”
EU funding
links
In 2008,
Valery Gergiev, one of Russia’s most famous conductors, held a propaganda
concert in the ruined city of Tskhinvali, the capital of Georgia’s breakaway
region of South Ossetia, which Moscow-backed separatists had just seized.
As the
audience waved Russian and Ossetian flags, Gergiev conducted the Leningrad
symphony, a popular patriotic work and symbol of resistance against fascism. He
later took part in a televised campaign ad for Putin in 2012, praising the
Russian president’s leadership, and signed an open letter supporting the
Kremlin’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea.
After
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he was dropped by his
management and dumped by various orchestras and theaters, from Milan and Munich
to Rotterdam and Vienna. He has conducted concerts in China and Iran, but is
sanctioned by Ukraine and has not stepped foot in Europe since the all-out
assault began.
That is
about to change.
Gergiev is
set to perform a handful of shows in Barcelona next year with Russia’s
Mariinsky Orchestra as part of the Ibercámera concert series, which lists the
EU’s Next Generation fund as a financial supporter.
The event’s
organizer, Josep María Prat, told Spanish outlet El País there was “no legal
impediment” to Gergiev participating and said he hoped “music [would] be a
bridge to unite, not to war.” (Representatives for the Mariinsky Orchestra,
which Gergiev directs, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
But the EU
isn’t buying it.
The
Commission initiated talks with the Spanish authorities to verify that no EU
funds have been used to stage performances involving the pro-Putin Russian
maestro, according to a Commission official speaking on background to discuss
the dialogue.
Asked about
its EU funding, a spokesperson for the festival told POLITICO its concerts had
“never been subsidized by the European Union” but conceded it had sought an
arts grant from the Next Generation EU fund, the bloc’s flagship pandemic
recovery package, in December 2022.
Micallef,
the EU’s culture chief, said even if a performance is entirely privately
funded: “That should not stop us from making very strong political statements
about the fact we should not offer any space for those who are supporting these
wars of aggression.”
“We have to
work stronger and harder with our member states to make sure this doesn’t
happen,” he added.
The
Ibercámera spokesperson would not confirm when exactly Gergiev would tour
Spain, but said it had organized more than 200 of his concerts in the decades
prior to Moscow’s full-scale invasion and looked forward to welcoming him back
“as soon as possible.”
“Throughout
our group’s nearly 50-year history, we have acted with respect and under the
protection of current Spanish and European laws,” the spokesperson added.
‘A question
of security’
Ukraine’s
art scene has scorned the gradual softening of European high culture’s stance
toward Russia, which comes amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts to
broker peace by reopening dialogue with the Kremlin.
Ukrainian
director Eugene Lavrenchuk was supposed to lead a production of Handel’s opera
“Rinaldo” in Jerusalem in July. He resigned after he saw a poster for the show
which included the names of two Russian singers among the cast despite asking
producers not to hire Russian performers.
“For us
Ukrainians, a boycott of everything Russian is not a question of culture and
art, it is a question of security,” he told POLITICO.
“Russia has
been pursuing a soft power policy with the help of art and culture for many
hundreds of years … and forcibly imposed the Russian language and Russian
culture,” he added.
The early
days of Moscow’s invasion saw a broader Western rejection of Russian culture
and artistic figures allegedly in league with the Kremlin, something
Lithuania’s culture minister deemed a “mental quarantine.” Lavrenchuk said it
was troubling that this resolve was now, apparently, wavering.
“Today, we
cannot stand on the same stage with Russians, regardless of the context,
because other people will use it to legitimize the friendship of Ukrainian and
Russian peoples,” he said. “One will say that politicians are fighting
somewhere else, but the ordinary people are Slavic brothers. This cannot be
allowed.”
Ukraine’s
culture minister offered a solution: European theater companies should hire
Ukrainian or European performers instead of Russian ones.
“In Ukraine,
in Poland, in Sweden, we have the artist at the same or sometimes even better
quality,” Tochytskyi said. “Let’s promote those who really share democratic
values.”
Ukraine’s
own arts scene has been shattered by Moscow’s invasion.
A Russian
airstrike on a theater in Mariupol in March of 2022 likely killed hundreds of
sheltering civilians. Ihor Voronka, a Ukrainian opera singer, was killed on the
front lines last July; and Vasyl Slipak, a baritone who performed at the Paris
Opera before volunteering with the Ukrainian army, was felled by a Russian
sniper in Donbas in 2016.
Bombs and
ballet
Hundreds of
protesters in April crowded around a theater in Bratislava, waving Ukrainian
flags and holding up photographs of bombed-out Ukrainian cities.
They had
gathered to protest a concert by Anna Netrebko, a Russian soprano, darling of
the opera world — and, at least at one point, a vocal supporter of Putin.
Netrebko has
criticized Moscow’s invasion and stressed she does not involve herself in
politics. But her detractors point out that she supported Putin’s reelection
campaign in 2012, has met with him on numerous occasions and declared in an
interview with Russian state media in 2017 it is “impossible to think of a
better president for Russia.”
She also
posed for a photograph with the leader of pro-Russian separatists from eastern
Ukraine in 2014 and handed him a check for one million rubles to rebuild a
destroyed theater in rebel-held Donetsk — though she later claimed she did not
actually know who the man was, nor that the flag he was holding belonged to the
rebel group.
After Russia
launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Netrebko — who was mentored
by Gergiev early in her career and celebrated her 50th birthday in 2021 with a
televised concert at the Kremlin Palace — was dumped by prestigious opera
houses from New York to London. Once one of the world’s most in-demand prima
donnas, she took a months-long hiatus from performing. Kyiv also sanctioned her
in 2023.
But the
curtain has risen once again on Netrebko’s career.
Her first
show in the U.S. post invasion took place at the Palm Beach Opera in Florida in
February this year, and her rendition of Puccini’s “Tosca” at London’s Royal
Opera in September will be her first at the majestic venue since before the
war. Her schedule for the next 18 months is packed with performances in Europe,
from Berlin to Zurich.
Despite a
formal protest to the Slovak government by Ukraine’s ambassador, Netrebko’s
concert in Bratislava in April sold out, with the theater’s director calling
her critics “primitive.”
“Those who
preach the openness of culture and art condemn someone for their origin,”
Zuzana Ťapáková scoffed in an interview with a Slovak newspaper.
Netrebko’s
manager Miguel Esteban provided POLITICO with a 74-page document detailing her
various statements about Putin, the war and Ukraine, arguing she was often
misunderstood or taken out of context.
Esteban said
the singer had taken a “personal risk” by publicly using the word “war” instead
of the euphemistic special military operation to describe Moscow’s invasion,
“potentially putting her extended family and close friends still living in
Russia in danger,” and said she has not stepped foot in Russia since February
2022.
Vyacheslav
Volodin, chairman of the parliament in Moscow, accused Netrebko, a dual
Russian-Austrian citizen, of betraying Russia by speaking out against the
invasion and wanting to “preserve prestigious concert venues.”
“She has a
voice, but not a conscience,” he fumed in a Telegram statement.
Though some
performers, including Netrebko, have argued art and politics should be mutually
exclusive, the Ukrainian director Lavrenchuk said there was no easy way to
disentangle Russia’s war machine from its use of culture as soft power.
Over the
centuries, Russia has “killed millions of people but still became known for its
brilliant ballet and operas,” he said.
“Putin is
separate … missiles and bombs are separate, and opera is separate,” he said.
“But in fact … there is a connection in everything, the most direct
connection.”
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