Just in: Covent Garden sacks Russian permanent guest conductor
NewsA Russian music site is reporting that the Royal Opera House has torn up its contract for the rest of the current season with Pavel Sorokin, permanent guest conductor of the Royal Ballet.
Sorokin was due to conduct eight Swan Lakes in May, including a live worldwide broadcast to cinemas on May 19.
He is a regular conductor at the Bolshoi.
As expected, nothing on the Covent Garden website.
Does the ROH routinely post its personnel decisions on its website? Few arts websites I know do. Marquee hires, yes, and the occasional high-profile retirement, but that’s it.
Can one be fired for not speaking out? That seems wrong to me.
You are right. One should not be fired for not speaking out. Russophobia is intensifying all over in the West, especially in the United Kingdom. This hysteria is very dangerous. I just hope all of this does not spill over to you know what. The learned analysis of relations between Russia and the West by the late Stephen F. Cohen seems more prescient than ever before. Does anyone know if Yuri Bashmet has spoken out?
why is it necessary to use terms like ‘ torn up’ ? How do we know it wasn’t, in the current climate, by mutual agreement ?
Looks like dear Comrade Malenkov’s younger brother.
Noticed the fund raising Mariinsky Theatre Trust in London has closed.
what should they write? “we are discriminating russians”?
What should Putin’s war machine write? “we are killing civilians, children included”?
Is there an ethical dilemma in demanding artists denounce Putin while their families are, in effect, being held hostage?
shame on covent garden and all the other institutions.
just because of russin nationality all russians are getting fired.
art is one of the few things which is connecting people in our crazy world.music managers are such terrible opportunistic people.
They pleased gergiev for decades (crimea annexion no problem).
now they drop him like a piece of sh… for sure gergiev went way to far, but it can’t be right to mistrust all russians in general.
Hey Paavel! Are you russian by any chance! This is the second time when russians are creating and doing atrocities against Ukraine …. Remember when they starved the Ukrainians ??? Do you also know when they stollen territories from Romania? 70 years ago? And when they gathered men from occupied territories and promised to let them go but instead they shoot them!!! Vlad the TROLL! Russians should grow up for the 21 century! They behave like during stone age!
When “Russians starved Ukrainians” in 1931, they were starving themselves (Volga & Kuban areas, in particular), just as where Kazakhs, as were all people in the Soviet Union who were living off agriculture or livestock.
So the Holodomor is essentially Ukrainian nationalist propaganda.
A disgusting comment, riddled with ignorance and racism. The Russians murdered 4 million plus Ukrainians, in an inexcusable act of brutality.
They will all sacked in the music world before long regardless, just for being Russian, and nothing else.
Agitprop troll. No one is sacking Russian musicians just for being Russians, and even less _all_ Russian musicians. Putin however is _killing_ people in Ukraine just because they are Ukrainian civilians.
This manufactured melodrama about the terrible misfortunes of Russian artists just because they are Russians is getting extremely boring.
This is awful and unnecessary. What did an artist have to do with an invasion?
Nothing, obviously. But neither does a commercial airline pilot, or someone who exported car parts to Europe, or someone who worked for Ikea in Russia. Or cooperating academic institutions.
Sanctions, by definition, harm the innocent and the guilty alike. A country and its people are punished for the terrible political choices of the leaders.
The sanctions imposed last week do not have an exemption for musicians. And it would be hard to argue that the entire Russian economy should be sanctioned – except the music industry.
Not being able to conduct at the ROH is bad, but presumably not quite as bad as what, e.g., the musicians at the Kiev Opera Hous are going through right now.
The people wringing their hands in this comment section seem to have overlooked the fact that it is a Russian site posting the news. Until I hear from ROH, I hold my breath. As another poster has written here, it is very possible the contract was terminated by mutual agreement. It is also possible the conductor was recalled home – after all, there’s a war going on, even if Putin calls it by a different name. This continuous implication that the Apocalypse of Western culture is looming large just because a few Putin supporters were deprived of their Western gigs is beyond ridiculous. Western and Eastern Europe were culturally separated for long periods during the 20th century, yet the cultural Apocalypse missed the West, as it has missed Russia so far. Don’t lay it on with too large a trowel, guys, this smacks of fear. If you continue like this, people may have a collective lightbulb moment, namely that Russian artists, regardless of political orientation, are expandable after all. The Apocalypse in Ukraine is, on the other hand, very real.
*are expEndable after all…
sigh.
What happened to tolerance and diversity? How is persecuting Russian citizens going to help?
It is called sanctions, not persecutions. For the rest, I have no time to educate you. There is an excellent comment here by HugoPreuß.
P.S. Music is not about diversity, it’s about music.
I guess I have to revise my understanding of “permanent.”
More seriously, do all of these contracts contain clauses allowing them to be unilaterally cancelled? Contracts seem to have little meaning these days.
Why do you assume it was unilaterally cancelled? Why not cancelled by mutual agreement? The Russian article doesn’t say “cancelled” or “fired”. There is a war going on. Maybe he didn’t want to return in May for a few performances. Maybe he, and ROH, thought he _couldn’t_ return because, ya know, air travel may be cancelled in war time. Maybe, maybe, maybe… Of all these maybes, why did you pick unilateral cancellation?
Agitprop nonsense.
Vovka. I happen to know you.
Europe has the choice whether or not to have Russian musicians working here via Schengen/UK visas.
The EU states have the right to annul them if conditions are not met.
Visas are conditional, exactly on the same basis that I get when a country issues me with one.
Those conditions at a time of war may be made more specific.
I have no problem with that.
In my opinion ALL Schengen visas to Russian musicians should be put on hold, unless they came out with solid statements of opposition to the war.
It’s the only way to increase the clamour to stop the war crimes being committed by Russian forces in UKRAINE, including mortar fire on families trying to flee from a conflict zone yesterday, killing young children being carried to safety.
The idea that they can have their families threated at home in Russia is just total patent BS.
Some of us HAVE family members in Russia.
Opposition is so widespread, particularly in Moscow & SPB, only a government that makes fake elections and excludes candidates from choice, could ever claim legitimacy.
They lost the young generation more than a decade ago, this is a FACT.
It’s the young generation you should hope will be your future audience as you retire….but no you are still happy to play for the white haired money-rich generation that is making your very own art form obsolete.
The young generation will never forgive or forget that compromised class of musicians that carried on as “biz as usual” with the Kleptocrats in Moscow running the show.
It’s one reason why I rarely go to the opera or concerts any more there.
The whole thing is by and large a pile of shit, and I am not alone in saying so….
I don’t hear any comment from you about this growing storm, and the processes and compromises that have led the way especially from the “artist class” who have been happy to take the money and act as high class prostitutes for Putin’s culture ministry.
I have to ask why, you don’t face the issues, the Kharkiv opera house in ruins, and your fellow musicians returning to FIGHT the agressor in Ukraine.
I don’t think you would have the courage to do that, from your comfortable home in France.
I disagree. Discrimination on Russian citizens who are working hard and talented should not be allowed. He is not an oligarch its once again just ridiculous.
Any Russian musicians who want to keep working better take the disloyalty oath ASAP!