Soprano Anna Netrebko, arguably the world’s best contemporary opera singer (certainly one of the best), with whom I have been secretly in love for years (hopefully my wife will forgive me), has been fired from her job at the New York Metropolitan Opera. It turned out she was of Russian descent.
Anna Netrebko lives in New York, has an Azeri (maybe even a Muslim) for a husband, and apparently had no interest in politics. She certainly didn’t comment on it publicly. She was just doing her job – being beautiful and having a perfect voice – and she did it well. Perhaps the only thing anyone could accuse her of is that she received a Russian state decoration 14 years ago. It’s just that at that time, even Barack Obama was friends with Putin.
It’s just that, as one computer Rusian-buster put it on Twitter, “there is no place for such people in a democratic society.” I admit that I would totally understand if someone was reluctant to trust her with classified information or employ her in the security forces. Yes, people of Russian descent are at a higher risk of working for Russia. Just as people of Czech origin have a higher risk of working for the Czech Republic (unless they are part of the Prague honorifics, where the risk is zero). But to sing in the opera? Would that be like inserting secret pro-Russian messages into the role of Mimi in La Boheme?
We’re going back to the days of racial background checks. But in my case, the guardians of democracy can rest easy. I have no Russian ancestry until the third generation.
