On Friday I finally took my first Spanish tutoring session after saying I’d wanted to do so for a year. I am accepting recommendations for shows/films in Spanish so I can build my fluency. You know what I would like, I presume. My instructor and I discussed novels written originally in Spanish and when I mentioned that I read 2666 last year, she told me that she has another student in New York reading it right now. Is it one of you?
Last week I read The Unspeakable Skipton. I just started reading my advanced reader’s edition of Brandon Taylor’s new novel, Minor Black Figures, which comes out in October (galley brag).
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Despite the continued outcry at her casting, the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko—who has failed to denounce Putin, though she has denounced the Russia-Ukraine war—starred last week in the Royal Ballet and Opera’s new production of Tosca, a Puccini opera about, among other things, police corruption and political repression. Oliver Mears, the RBO’s director of opera, spoke to the New York Times about the decision. While some (like Met Opera manager Peter Gelb) believe that Netrebko has only denounced the war in order to preserve her career, Mears is satisfied with the singer’s stance, pointing out that she hasn’t returned to Russia since the war began. When Russia made its invasion, Netrebko was in Naples. Days later, she issued a statement on social media saying she opposed the war, but that she believed, “forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right….I am an artist and my purpose is to unite people across political divides.”
The trouble with Tosca
Last week I absolutely inhaled Lonely Crowds. How is your summer reading going?
The RBO, as an institution, has been outspoken in support of Ukraine, organizing benefits, performances, and other actions explicitly condemning Russia’s invasion. More recently, however, it drew criticism for not taking a similar stance against Israel’s war in Gaza. Mears, himself, got caught in a viral video snatching a Palestinian flag out of the hands of a performer who waved it in an act of protest during a curtain call. RBO also recently canceled its plans to bring this production of Tosca to Tel Aviv, in light of pushback from performers, staff, and audiences. Mears declined to comment on these actions.
Instead he suggested that operas could be intrinsically political because of the contexts in which they were created:
The greatest composers were always subversive of the conventions of their time. That’s why they retain their relevance in different ways, whether Mozart, Wagner, Verdi or Shostakovich.
On the other hand, an audience goes to the opera to be transported and participate in a collective ritual, with 100 people in the pit and potentially 100 people onstage. I think that it’s possible to retain the transgressive element in all the greatest operas without bashing people over the head with political statements, which invariably are crass.
There’s an omnipresent debate—which has heightened recently—about separating art from politics, and so on. Some, like Netrebko, will point to art’s power to unite as a reason to err on the side of politically neutral. But unfortunately, it is impossible to separate art from the flow of capital and therefore from the political systems which dominate.
This tension was also on display when the Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov made an announcement after taking his bow with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms (the BBC’s eight-week classical music concert series, which it has organized and broadcast since 1927). His statement follows, according to The Times:
“In my heart there is great pain … I come from Israel and live there. I love it, it’s my home. But what’s happening is atrocious and horrific on a scale that’s unimaginable.
Innocent Palestinians being killed in thousands, displaced again and again, without hospitals and schools, not knowing when the next meal [will come]. Israeli hostages are kept in terrible conditions for almost two years and political prisoners are languishing in Israeli jails.
I ask you all to do whatever is in your power to stop this madness. Every little action counts while governments hesitate and wait. We cannot let this go on any longer, every moment that passes puts the safety of millions at risk. Thank you.”
Volkov, who lives near Tel Aviv, has pledged not to work in Israel for the foreseeable future as the conflict continues. He explained the decision to The Times, saying, “this war is happening in my name, and I’m going to fight against it….As a conductor, you have to have a strong moral backbone. It’s like running a company—you have responsibility. You’re in the public eye. Maybe nobody cares what you say, but it has some influence. It’s important to do whatever we can to stop the cycle of helplessness.” He went on to condemn Netanyahu’s government, the justice system which “has supported the occupation for decades,” and “fascist” police rule.
While Volkov feels that the least he can do is speak out and “[stand] with the Palestinians,” he does not believe that artists should be forced to speak out.
Last week, the Flanders Festival Ghent—a classical music festival in Belgium—withdrew its invitation to the Munich Philharmonic, which is led by Lahav Shani, the music director of the Israeli Philharmonic because its organizers were “unable to provide sufficient clarity about his attitude to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv,” the New York Times reported.
The festival said in its statement that Shani had spoken out about “peace and reconciliation several times in the past” but that because of his role as chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, it was unable to clarify his stance on the “genocidal regime in Tel Aviv.” The decision sparked protests and statements from others, including Germany’s culture minister, who called the move antisemitic. The festival’s artistic director Jan Van den Bossche defended the decision: “We do not know where he stands in this conflict, and genocide leaves, in our view, no room for ambiguity,” he told the NYT. “We did not proceed lightly.”
Shani will keep his role at the Israel Philharmonic when next year he becomes the music director of the Munich Philharmonic. He is taking the place of Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, who was fired for his refusal to condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
On the opening day of the Royal Opera’s Tosca, about 60 protestors stood outside the theater, though some attendees expressed doubt about this form of action. “I’m here for the singing,” said one audience member, on the question of art and politics, the New York Times reported.
Earlier this month, more than 700 classical musicians signed a statement condemning “the support of Western powers for the genocidal policy of the state of Israel, which flouts international law and its institutions with complete impunity.” The statement explicitly distinguished anti-Zionism from antisemitism, condemning the latter. It also elaborated on the musicians’ unique perspective as it related to their art form:
Classical music, in its entirety, maintains an undeniable link with the history of European states. It seems essential to us that this tradition not be confused with a certain form of conservatism that would manifest in the appropriation and instrumentalization of these musics of the past by a political camp aligned with domination—whether geopolitical, social, or societal.
Last week, a group of Israeli cultural workers—artists, curators, musicians, authors, photographers and poets—staged a protest in Tel Aviv, decrying the violence in and destruction of Gaza. The Art Newspaper reported that some participants handed out pamphlets, which read, in part, “Most of the buildings in Gaza have been completely destroyed, including cultural institutions that were severely damaged… the destruction of culture is an act intended to erase collective memory—to strip Palestinian culture from the past and from the imagination of the people. We call on cultural institutions, and on thinkers, artists, and cultural figures—to join us and stand against the destruction of Gaza and not remain merely on the sidelines.”
Over at the Kennedy Center, ticket sales are not looking good at all. Washingtonian reported earlier this month that sales of dance performances are especially in decline. A Kennedy Center staffer supplied the data to the publication, saying, “Yikes.” As it stands, in October, Germany’s prestigious Stuttgart Ballet will be performing to an Opera House audience that is, as of early September, between four to 19 percent full. LA-based company BodyTraffic, which is performing in a smaller theater in the complex, has a 12 percent audience capacity as of the same time.
The Center also recently terminated its head of jazz programming, Kevin Struthers, and its last remaining social impact staffer, Malka Lasky, the Washington Post reported.
Meanwhile, at the Smithsonian, artists Nicholas Galanin and Margarita Cabrera withdrew from a symposium hosted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which coincided with the closing of the group exhibition “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” Hyperallergic reported. The artists deemed the Smithsonian’s decision to make the symposium private and unrecorded an act of censorship, which the institution denied. A person with knowledge of the matter told Hyperallergic that the symposium was made private “… because of the Trump executive orders, which specifically targeted ‘Shape of Power.’ The idea…was to ensure security at the event and not make the museum even more of a target by the Trump administration, as well as to ensure that speakers were able to speak freely.”
Philadelphia’s Woodmere Art Museum, which sued the Trump administration for the termination of its Institute of Museum and Library Services grant, got its funding back and, as a result, dropped its case, ArtNews reported.
In Chicago, the Obama Presidential Center has announced commissions from 10 artists: Nick Cave, Nekisha Durrett, Jenny Holzer, Jules Julien, Idris Khan, Aliza Nisenbaum, Jack Pierson, Alison Saar, Kiki Smith, and Marie Watt. In a statement, the Obama Foundation said that these artists “represent a diverse and dynamic cross-section of the global contemporary art world and reflect the Center’s commitment to free, accessible public art as a vital force in civic life.”
International artists, however, are increasingly steering clear of the U.S., The Art Newspaper reports, amid fears of safety entering and exiting the country. Some directors of art residencies have also pointed to higher-than-usual rates of visa denials for international artists.
Over on the west coast, things are not looking encouraging for Los Angeles’s 2028 Cultural Olympiad, which is expected to coincide—as tradition deems it—with the summer games. The New York Times reported that LA28 (the Olympic committee) hasn’t yet announced a cultural plan and only has two people (one of them a volunteer) assigned to the task. For context, Paris’s three-year Cultural Olympiad included 2,596 projects in 5,048 locations all over France. The 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles featured Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring, three productions from the Royal Opera, a Hollywood Bowl concert by the LA Phil, a major French Impressionist landscape exhibition at LACMA, and more. Must have been nice…
The Dallas Opera is presenting a performance by hologram Maria Callas on Halloween. Okay!
On that note, I am also really curious to see what comes out of the Royal Ballet and Opera’s RBO/Shift, its new AI-focused festival which will debut in June. The company’s associate director, Netia Jones, told the New York Times that she thinks fears of AI replacing artists are overblown, and that opera has long embraced technology for stage effects and the like. It is, she said, “an extension of our practice, not a replacement for our practice.”
I know that I have spoken ill of the artist Banksy before, but I will admit that his most recent work, which some have interpreted as a reaction to the UK’s designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, is quite good. Regrettably, as the painting was on a government building—the Royal Courts of Justice—it was destroyed. By the government. Which really only makes it all the more resonant.
London’s National Gallery just made a major announcement: thanks to two gifts of £150 million each, the more than 200-year-old institution will debut a new wing which will feature, for the first time in its history, art made in 1900 and later, The Times reported.
And a majority of Britons think that the UK should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. ▲