Two social-media messages from the US soprano Lisette Oropesa.

It is with great disappointment that I must cancel my appearance as Violetta in ‘La Traviata’ in Venice at La Fenice. I can’t tell you all how much this ‘Traviata’ meant to me and I know a lot of people were looking forward to seeing me in Venice.

Dear friends and fans, I am shaking as I type this…

I will be going to Paris to debut as Marguerite de Valois in the new production of LES HUGUENOTS, replacing Diana Damrau. This is a huge opportunity for me and I’m so grateful to have the chance to sing a beloved French role like this one at the Opéra national de Paris, at the Bastille.

The cast is incredible, including some of my favorite singers in the world!! Bryan Hymel, Ermonela Jaho Karine Deshayes Nicolas Testé and conducted by the ever incredible Michele Mariotti. We open September 28th, just one day before my birthday this year. I can’t think of a more welcome, more extravagantly wonderful gift than this.

I’ll send more information as I have it, but for now…let’s just enjoy this moment!!

Lisette will be replaced in Venice by two Italians, Claudia Pavone and Francesca Sassu.

The first post-Soviet print edition of New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians defined David Oistrakh as ‘Ukrainian violinist’.

Only a Kremlinologist could understand why. Until 1991 musicians from the USSR were described as ‘Soviet’, regardless of their heritage or politics. When the USSR broke up, desperate lexicographers reverted to place of birth.

Oistrakh was born in Odessa, a mixed port city with a large Jewish population. He moved to Moscow in his late teens and lived there for most of his life. His internal identity papers gave his nationality as ‘Jewish’.

For Grove, that was enough to make him Ukrainian. At least for a while, until protests prompted a revision. Oistrakh was Russian by language, Jewish by heritage. If he spoke Ukrainian at all, it was as his fourth language. Most people know that by now.

Still the mislabelling lives on. American scholars and journalists, unable to define musicians by race as the Russians did, have reverted to birthplace. In recent weeks, I have seen Leonard Bernstein described as ‘son of Ukrainian immigrants’, likewise Isaac Stern and Bob Dylan. All belong to Jewish families that fled Tsarist pogroms. The reason for their flight was the fact that they were Jewish.

They were as Ukrainian as bagels.

Got that?