Grigolo and Pumeza will sing for Putin masses
OperaThe Kremlin newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta is bragging that ‘the best opera singers in the world – from Italy, Brazil, South Africa, Israel, Armenia and Russia – will be heard in the heart of St. Petersburg’ on May 31.
Those taking part in the state event include the Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo, Armenian soprano Juliana Grigoryan, Pumeza Matshikiza from South Africa, the bass Mateus Franz (Switzerland) and the Israeli mezzo-soprano Maya Gour, who is a soloist at Cologne Opera.
Grigolo was banned at Covent Garden and other western companies after claims of misconduct.
Looks more like Netrebko to me.
Hmmm. Note the absence of Anna Netrebko.
I also think of the opponents of the Kremlin who have been murdered: Aleksei Navalny, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Sergei Yushenkov, Anna Politkovskaya, Aleksandr Litvinenko, Natalya Estemirova, Sergei Magnitsky, Alexander Litvinenko, and Boris Nemtsov, among others. There’s also the pro-Western Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko who was poisoned but survived though with his face grotesquely deformed by dioxin. I wonder if Russians understand why Eastern Europeans and Germans so abhor the idea of being drawn into the Russian sphere, despots like Viktor Orbán and Aleksandr Lukashenko aside.
Why would Russians want the Germans drawn into their sphere when the German parliament has just decriminalized the possession of child pornography? I’m sure that would make German pedophiles happy. It seems to me Germany is becoming creepier and sicker. Slouching towards Weimar Germany I guess.
An incomprehensible law change in my view, but it no way justifies the Kremlin’s history of murdering political dissidents. Until Russia changes these habits, it will remain isolated from Europe, and sadly, in some respects, not even seen as a European country–or least not one living by modern European standards.
It is also a great misfortune that there was a 15 to 20 year period after the fall of the wall when the West could have began integrating Russia into the EU and helping it build sensible political and economic structures that would have avoided the horrible mess Europe is in now. We could have all been living in friendship, cooperation, prosperity, and peace. Sadly, some of the worst people in both the USA and Russia led us in the wrong direction.
I checked on this new law in Germany. The maximum sentences remain in place. German prosecutors and police found the old law too inflexible. For example, teachers sometimes found images that could be used for child porn on students’ phones and forwarded them to the child’s parents so they could deal with it. Under the old law, they would have been prosecuted for “distributing” child pornography. The new law allows for such exemptions, or for things like parents’ groups inadvertently downloading images that might be defined as child pornography when they’re just sending photos of the family at the beach or something. So no real change in Germany’s prosecution of child abuse, just better, more effective laws.
https://apnews.com/article/germany-child-sexual-abuse-19e743b19057aa7345bf3cba4a8f6fff
Right. But I’ve learned the hard way in life that you can’t argue with the righteous. They’ll just start to go after you in retaliation.
They didn’t decriminalize child porn. They reduced the minimum sentence because some people were being unfairly drawn into the investigations and it was the *prosecutors* who wanted more leeway. Child porn is not legal in Germany.
I’m no fan of Grigolo, but ‘claims’ of misconduct should not be sufficient to destroy a career. That’s what courts of law are for.
It’s also within the rights of employers to act on these claims. If the alleged perpetrator disagrees with their decision, they can go to court. Few do for the simple reason that the allegations are usually true.
Uh huh.
So allegations are proof enough, eh?
Yes, employers are entitled to investigate allegations and act upon them. It’s called civilization.
I tried to listen to Grigolo’s latest album but I had to resign after 1 minute 32 seconds. If there are more like him, let Mr P have the whole batch at a discount
I just don’t understand how anyone with frontal lobes intact can go and create art in Putin’s Russia, or in his buddy Maduro’s Venezuela. You need to be a committed moral consequentialist – or just ignorant – to do either.
Perhaps you can enlighten us about when Ukraine invaded Russia and tortured, raped and killed its citizens.
False equivalency is a dangerous thing!
I don’t understand your question. Ukraine never invaded Russia. Nor do I make that claim. The opposite is true, which is why I do not understand anyone with decent values going there to perform, if invited by the Russian state. Where is my false equivalency?
If you believe that misguided Western foreign policy has contributed to the conflict in Ukraine it may not be that difficult.
Such a belief is utter nonsense. NATO is a defensive alliance, not an offensive one. Members apply to join, not because they wish to invade their neighbors, but because they seek a defensive shield against invasion from mad men like Putin. It is utterly false to claim a defensive shield as an existential threat. This is Russia’s grand excuse.
Such a belief is quite common in the West. This isn’t the forum to debate whether it us justified or not.
On the basis of where public opinion is now, is performing in Russia any worse than performing in Israel?
Or they could just be singing to a Russian audience… Can we please keep politics out of classical music? This is getting tiresome… Imagine if American orchestras stopped playing Beethoven during World War III… You know why they didn’t? Because people weren’t so fragile and offended over everything.
WW III? Did I sleep through it?
Reminds me of that song; Massa’s in de cold, cold, ground.
Expected anything from a circus guy like Grigolo, but certainly not from Pumeza. Some people don’t have any kind of morals… Shameful. And sad
Mateus Franz? There is no record of any singer with that name.
Who is Mateus Franz? There’s no record of a singer of that name anywhere on the internet.
AI?
This seems to me to be an incorrect retranslation from the Cyrillic transliteration. On the website linked his name is written Матеуса Франца which should read most probably Matheus França. However, the event in St. Petersburg is not listed under his name in OperaBase or on his personal website.
I’ve found him now. He seems to be a company member in Bern.
This concert should be billed as the has-been’s of the opera world, starring Grigolo and Netrebko.
put <Netrebko and Grigolo in Any Operahouse and the booking sites will crash within no time as it happened in Vienna