Puccini’s Tosca is high on the list of operas I don’t much care if I never see again. So the fact that the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, unquestionably one of our era’s exceptional opera singers, is due to sing Tosca in a new production at Covent Garden next month does not present me with a dilemma. I won’t be there anyway.
It might be more difficult, I admit, if Netrebko was singing Verdi, where she is so outstanding. But this column is not about my taste in opera. It is about something of wider moral importance. Netrebko’s London performances pose complex questions but require straightforward answers. First, is it right for a prestigious British institution, the Royal Opera House, to be hiring Netrebko while the Ukraine war continues? The answer could in theory be yes, were she to repeat her opposition to the war, but on the current evidence it is no.
Second, whether the hiring is right or wrong, what should now happen in the run-up to her premiere here on 11 September? Here, compromise is the least bad outcome for all involved. And, third, how far, if at all, should the arts become a proxy for politics, particularly at critical and brutal moments like the current Russian offensive in the Donbas region? In theory, they should not. In practice, quite simply, they are.
As ever, there are many sides to each problem. The case against Netrebko is that she is a highly prominent Russian who has praised Vladimir Putin in the past, accepted honours from the Russian state, and who, after Russia’s first war with Ukraine in 2014, was photographed with a pro-Kremlin separatist flag. In 2022, opera houses around the world quickly dispensed with Netrebko’s services when Putin’s armies invaded Ukraine. The war was an existential threat not just to Ukraine, but to Europe and its values – and it still is.
Some of these points were set out in a trenchant letter to the Guardian on 14 August, signed by more than 50 Ukrainian writers and artists, a cross-party group of UK MPs, and the former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark. The letter did not mince words. It accused Netrebko of being a “longtime symbol of cultural propaganda for a regime that is responsible for serious war crimes”. It said that nothing significant has changed to justify her hiring, and that the Royal Opera House must choose between its profits and its values.
Netrebko’s defence disputes all these points, but adds several others. As a prominent Russian, she argues, she has indeed met Putin, but she is not an ally. As a Russian, she is entitled to accept Russian honours. She did not know the significance of the flag in the 2014 photograph. However, Netrebko also now lives and pays her taxes in Austria. Just after the 2022 invasion she said on social media: “I am opposed to this senseless war of aggression and I am calling on Russia to end this war right now, to save all of us!” She has not been to Russia since 2022, and was attacked for her stance by the head of the Russian Duma. She also argues that, as an artist, she should not be required to take a public stand against her homeland in order to pursue her career.
Netrebko’s case is clearly different in several important ways – though the extent remains a source of dispute – from that of the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a regime lickspittle. Gergiev, long a familiar figure in the London musical scene, has repeatedly taken an outright pro-Putin stance, not just on Ukraine. He also led so-called victory concerts for Putin in Syria and in the disputed Russian territory of South Ossetia. Gergiev would probably jump at the chance of leading a similar gig in Ukraine. Netrebko, you suspect, would keep well away.
Nevertheless, Covent Garden’s own case is a muddle. The opera house says it has “always been clear” that Russian nationality does not equate with support for Putin, and that Netrebko has “made clear statements” attacking his war. But it also says that things have now changed to allow Netrebko’s return. “Our support for Ukraine was aligned with the global consensus at the time,” the chief executive, Alex Beard, announced. “As the world’s geopolitics have become more complex, our stance has changed to ensure that our actions reflect our purpose and values.”
These are weasel words. The suspicion has to be that Covent Garden was always keen to get Netrebko back as soon as it could. She was rumoured to be returning to the Royal Opera in June 2023 but never did. Yet while London hesitated, other big opera houses in Paris, Vienna, Munich and Milan have brought her in while the war still raged, as early as September 2022 in Vienna’s case. Covent Garden’s reopened door comes only a few months before Netrebko performs at the Paris Opera for the third time since the war began.
Soon, the only standout among the world’s glamour opera houses may be the New York Met. The Met boss, Peter Gelb, said this month: “I believe that cultural leaders must stand by their decisions in support of a free and democratic world.” Netrebko is suing the Met. But Covent Garden, like others in Europe, has bent with the wind. Surely, if a Russian star was unacceptable in 2022, they should still be unacceptable in 2025.
Is there a way through this jungle of conflicting passions and principles? One solution would be for Covent Garden to bow to the critics and pull the Tosca run, or at least Netrebko’s part in it. The chances of that seem nil. Apart from anything else, Covent Garden would face a huge legal bill. Another is that Netrebko could herself pull out and be replaced by Aleksandra Kurzak, who is scheduled to take over the role of Tosca on 24 September. This outcome seems unlikely too. It does not seem in Netrebko’s proud character.
It would certainly help if, before 11 September, Netrebko was to say something unambiguous for the British audience in opposition to Putin’s continuing war, and acknowledging the justice of the feelings of the objectors. Covent Garden’s management would be crazy not to press for this to happen in some way.
This has been a slow car crash event. It would not have happened if Covent Garden had been smarter about the reputational dangers, and how they are multiplied in the social media age. But, like Donald Trump with Putin in Alaska, Covent Garden imagined it could have the best of both worlds, by flying the Ukrainian flag and hiring Netrebko. It has been proved wrong. Unless something changes, the story in two weeks’ time will not be Netrebko’s singing but the pro-Ukraine protests – outside and perhaps even inside the opera house. It would be an outcome that Britain’s figurehead arts institution has brought entirely upon itself.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
This article was amended on 28 August 2025. An earlier version suggested that Anna Netrebko is soon returning to the Paris Opera for the first time since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In fact she appeared there in December 2022 and January 2024.
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