To those who believe this precipitous: Netrebko got into hot water in 2014:
“When the soprano Anna Netrebko made a donation earlier this week to an opera house in Donetsk, a war-torn city in Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists, she declared that it was “not about politics” but about art. But the picture that circulated around the world after she made the donation showed her holding a flag used by some separatist groups.
The photo with the flag — which Ms. Netrebko said through a spokesman caught her off-guard — was the latest example of the political tensions Russian artists with international careers are facing in a time of deteriorating relations between Russia and the West.
Ms. Netrebko made the donation on Sunday in St. Petersburg, giving a check for a million rubles — roughly $18,500 — for the opera house in Donetsk. She gave the check to Oleg Tsarov, a politician who hopes to unite Donetsk with another separatist region, Luhansk, to form a state called Novorossiya. They were then photographed holding the Novorossiyan flag.”
NY Times, 12/8/14 |
