Opera goes ahead on Putin’s poison victim
NewsGrange Park Opera has just confirmed that Anthony Bolton’s The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko will receive its world premiere on July 15. The work was scheduled for last summer but postponed due to Covid.
Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer, was murdered in London in November 2006.
Grange Park has worked closely with his widow, Marina. She says: ‘Over the last decade and a half, a myriad of projects – including films, movies and books have been created covering my husband’s remarkable fate. Now however, as we approach the 15-year anniversary of Sasha’s death, his memory is to be remembered through a rather extraordinary medium, the music and compositions of Anthony Bolton’s opera. Music has a profound ability to channel emotions that words can struggle to convey, and I believe this opera will be a unique and moving way to honour the life and death of my husband.’
Will anyone from the Russian embassy attend?
No, just tourists, come to admire the local church.
As investigative journalist Chris Floyd wrote: “It beggars belief that a savvvy operator like Putin would have countenanced a plan to kill a small-fry critic in such a spectacularly public fashion, in the capitol of a foreign country, with a slow -acting radioactive isotope that guaranteed weeks of damaging headlines and an international outcry, putting at risk months of delicate negotiations over Russia’s expansion into the European energy market and other lucrative deals.” There were plenty of others that could have murdered him.
Is Putin ruthless? Of course, but this seems very well not to be one of them.
Where’s the opera about the persecution of Julian Assange?
I know, probably not allowed…
Wow.
Oh Hayne. Bless. Putin uses black ops like this to Send a Message. And the cognitive dissonance that was/is so much an essential part of Communism enables his honest denials: what somebody once called ‘the unfeigned outrage of the justly accused’. (Apologies, however, if you’re a Russian shil and know all this perfectly well.)
“Is Putin ruthless? Of course but this seems very well not to be one of them.”
Did you miss that part? The apartment bombings in 3 different Russian cities in 1999 which killed 307 people and 1700 were injured. This was blamed on a Chechen “terrorist” even though the FSB was caught planting explosives. This helped cement Putin’s power. I’m not forgetting the dead journalists either.
All I tried to show is there were other people who wanted Litvinenko dead and the logic which goes against Putin’s involvement in this SPECIFIC case.
Why you stuck communism in there is beyond me as Putin is an autocrat. Russia is not alone my friend.
The US tried to kill Castro over 100 times.
US predator drones are killing innocent people to this day. British agents tried to assassinate Kaddifi with a car bomb. French agents finally succeeded in killing Kaddifi in 2011. Israel has assassinated most of the Palestinian leadership over the years. Let’s not get started about China.
Why doesn’t Grange Park Opera have the courage to do an opera on someone (alive for now) who is much more relevant to Western liberty, namely Julian Assange?
Don’t any of you people care about the basic right of free speech? My impression is no. I hope I’m wrong.
The media outlet Floyd writes for could hardly be called journalism. But if he believes Putin is *worried* about being tied to the assassinations of Alexander Litvinenko Anna Politkovskaya, Natalia Estemirova, Stanislav Markelov, then Floyd is worse than naive. Putin *relishes* that he is suspected of ordering these killings, just as he is doubtless enjoying the recent virtual hijackings of various companies. It feeds into his mythos as a defender of Russia and international bad-a**.
Putin will say and do anything to distract from the truly dismal situation in Russia, from spikes in COVID cases, sky-high alcoholism and drug use, murder rate far worse than the US, short life expectancy (on par with Syria), etc – most of which he blames on Western sanctions. The irony is if Putin acted like a legitimate leader instead of a thug, the sanctions would be lifted and the lives of ordinary Russians would improve dramatically. But Putin, who’s said to be worth $200 Billion, is hardly interested in the little guy.
Floyd and his fellow travelers can engage in all the obfuscation and historical revisionisms they desire. But there’s a reason people fled to the west (and continue to do so) and not the other way round.
“The media outlet Floyd writes for could hardly be called journalism.” Why, because you don’t like it?
How do you know Putin “relishes” being know for ordering killings and being a “bad a**? Of course conditions in Russia aren’t good. If he acts like a legitimate leader the sanctions would be lifted just like in China. Where did I say Putin is a nice guy?
I was showing that other governments are not always the good guys either. Don’t you have anything to say about Assange? Just ignore him?
I was pointing out in the Litvinenko case that there were common sense reasons why Putin may not have done it. You just see red. Why do you ignore everything else I wrote about Putin? Again, wouldn’t it be more relevant to have an opera written about a living person being imprisoned in the West for journalism?
Verrrrry verrrrry savvvvy indeed.
Although it is good to keep that incredible crime in memory in one way or another, I wonder whether an opera, of all options, is the best way. It seems to me that such initiative is falsifying the subject if it is supposed to be a literal story telling thing. It has something tasteless about it.
And then: Bolton has investment as a hobby:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mosZDU_6ZjM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGpn74F3cTk
…. which may be helpful with questions of sponsoring.
Oh Hayne. Doubly bless. A truly virtuoso demonstration of whataboutery there. (And kudos to Litvinenko’s Ghost, who stays on subject, nails Putin forensically, and hangs you out to dry.)