Though she never really left. Beyond Vienna, she continued performing at Berlin’s Staatsoper and Arena di Verona from 2022 to 2025. But most major opera houses tried to avoid her, following the lead of the Metropolitan Opera, which cancelled her planned engagements in the spring of 2022 and never allowed her to return.

The decision was logical. Netrebko received awards from Putin and was his representative during elections, sang in the Kremlin, donated to the opera in Donetsk under the control of Russian paramilitaries, and posed with the “Novorossiya” flag in 2015. In 2022, she only wrote a watered-down statement as if condemning the war.

But now something has changed. On 2 November, Zürich Opera opens its run of Verdi’s “La forza del destino”, and the controversial Russian soprano will lead as Leonora, shortly after her recent performances at Covent Garden, despite protests in Britain and now Switzerland.

Given Netrebko’s complicated history, this has sparked a heated debate that spans a broad spectrum between uncompromising radical rejections and uncritical acceptance in the spirit of “anything goes”.

In particular, Zürich Opera Intendant Matthias Schulz—who had already brought Netrebko to Berlin during his tenure there—arduously defended his decision in an interview in Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 16 October. In a commentary on 17 October, the editorial team found the arguments to be strong. But should we follow the bandwagon of this reborn Netrebko enthusiasm?

Bridges to the Moscow mafia?

Mr Schulz chose to “accentuate the positive” of “building bridges”. What a commendable, noble initiative! However, this begs a question: why do we have to build bridges through Netrebko, and where are those bridges intended to go from Zürich?

Vienna, perhaps, where she lives? Is it maybe war-torn Ukraine, whose culture and identity are being destroyed? Perhaps by staging an opera by a Ukrainian composer or even commissioning one, as the Metropolitan Opera did in 2023? Neither of these is happening.

Netrebko is not just any Russian artist–we are not talking about “all Russians”. Her career was fostered by powerful patrons in Russia; her longstanding ties to Putin’s friends, such as Valery Gergiev, are widely documented. She owes these people, no matter what her staff says in their statements now. Gergiev, rumoured to be Putin’s children’s godfather, was particularly instrumental in launching her career almost singlehandedly.

Honest Russian musicians, many of whom I have known for a long time in Europe, openly talk about Gergiev as “the Putin of Russian music”. Gergiev turned institutions under his control into mafia-like clan structures, presiding over the fates of musicians and singers. This is his network, and Netrebko is part of it.

Gergiev is always “at the ready” to serve Putin, and some classical music has turned into propaganda in Tskhinvali (Russian-occupied South Ossetia), Palmyra, or, indeed, Italy, where he unsuccessfully tried to make inroads last summer. In the same way, Netrebko owes favours to Gergiev–and Putin. These deeply personal, informal patron-client networks never dissolve.

Music theatre directors, such as Mr Schulz, are also apparently friends of Netrebko and try to shield her in bad faith, rather than out of concern for artistic freedom. This is not surprising as these same people also cherished their relations with the Russian classical music “mafia dons” such as Gergiev, conductor Theodor Currentzis (closely affiliated with Russian banks and governmental structures), or “Putin’s cashier” and cellist Sergei Roldugin, turning them into staples of Western concert halls and theatres.

“I want to sit on two chairs, even three if necessary”, Netrebko said in her own words about her “doing the splits between East and West”. If she doesn’t perform in Russia now, it shows her pragmatic distancing from the rotten herring—her Russian friends. They, too, may want to distance themselves pragmatically from Netrebko, who isn’t the woman of the moment inside Russia due to her deep integration into the Western context and institutions.

Surely it would have been convenient for both to sit it out, but as the war drags on and will likely continue for the foreseeable future, Netrebko chose the West out of comfort, not because of the government she had supported up to 2021. Cold, pure, calculating, cynical pragmatism–not a clean moral break with a criminal regime.

Dirty people’s pure art

The defense is always the same: she’s too great an artist. But this ignores decades of debate about art’s complicity in power.

Walter Benjamin warned that every document of civilization is also a document of barbarism. And Theodore Adorno asked, “How can one write poetry after Auschwitz?”

Art is not merely a technical skill but a projection of specific ideological and political values. This is not about diminishing the status of art; in fact, art’s political context has a positive function. When we enjoy Wagner’s operas, only professional musicians appreciate the use of enharmonicism to modulate between distant tonalities. The public enjoys stories of love, betrayal, and power—deeply political.

This, of course, is a choice everyone has to make for themselves. But I doubt that Romans enjoyed Nero’s vocal technique as Rome burned.

The perfect conformist

Thankfully, Ms Netrebko did none of those things. Her advocates say that, in fact, she is not a war supporter, evidenced by her agreeing to perform in houses that sided with Ukraine, such as Zürich, and a couple of statements furnished by her lawyers.

But this is an extremely low standard. Do we lack so much in self-respect that we are grateful to Netrebko for tolerating us? She can do better than “not support war”.

The legendary conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler stayed in the Third Reich, earning more controversy than Netrebko has ever faced. Goebbels hailed Furtwängler’s foreign concerts as “German triumphs,” just as Moscow will claim Netrebko’s performances.

But Furtwängler used his position to save dozens of persecuted musicians, donated his concert proceeds to refugees, and risked his life defying Hitler. He systematically refused to give the “Hitler salute” to the Führer himself, challenged his and Goebbels’s authority over German music. What is Netrebko contributing? A statement through her lawyer.

Passive complicity

In her own account, one thing stands out: she is always a passive object. She didn’t know or understand; she was simply given the flag. Such passivity is out of character, especially with someone who built such an efficient career with a sharp focus and ruthless pragmatism.

This suggests dishonesty or indifference. Actually, Putin fosters this attitude of indifferent passivity in Russian society, preferring docile perpetrators to even active war supporters, as historian Jade McGlynn shows in “Russia’s War.”

What is needed is simply staying within the lines drawn by the government, ready to do whatever you are told to do. In short, precisely Netrebko’s behaviour: when needed, you sing in the Kremlin or in London; if necessary for your continued influence in the West, you may even disown your Kremlin masters publicly.

In fact, her lukewarm condemnations of war reflect this passivity: she bends to whatever power that be. If the elite consensus in Europe is to condemn the war, she will follow the crowd. If Europeans tomorrow demand worshipping the Flying Spaghetti Monster, she will do that—because she doesn’t care about anything but her personal promotion.

A perfect conformism combined with self-serving profiteering. This may be even understandable at a human level. But must Europeans really fund this with their tax money through their publicly financed opera houses?

To prove she actively resists the war, it would be right for her to donate her entire proceeds from Zürich to displaced Ukrainians, especially Ukrainian musicians and composers; or better still, to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This is at least what Furtwängler would do. Will Ms Netrebko and Mr Schulz rise to the challenge?

The short answer is: no. I don’t believe this. But miracles might happen. As unlikely as this supernatural act would be, one thing is certain, despite the current ardour of Netrebko supporters: the angel of history will be kind neither to her nor to them.

Roman Horbyk

Roman Horbyk is a Ukrainian media scholar and journalist at the University of Zürich. He holds a PhD in media studies from Södertörn University and has written on Russian propaganda, media politics, and the weaponization of culture in the post-Soviet space.

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