Controversial Russian soprano Anna Netrebko returns to Zurich

Controversial return of Russian soprano Anna Netrebko to Zurich Keystone-SDA

Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, whose 2024 concert in Lucerne was cancelled due to security concerns, is to perform at the Zurich Opera House from November.

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The institution’s new director, Matthias Schulz, says he does not fear any negative reactions.

“I’m convinced that she deserves to be given this chance,” the future director of Zurich Opera told the media on Thursday at the presentation of the 2025/26 season. In his view, it is wrong to make scapegoats of artists simply because we cannot get to the people who are really responsible.

Protecting artists

“As a cultural institution, we have a responsibility to protect artists from false ideologisation,” said Schulz, who takes up his new post on August 1. “I spoke to her personally about this before booking her. In Zurich, Anna Netrebko is due to sing Donna Leonora in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “La forza del destino”, from November 2.

In recent years, Anna Netrebko has only performed in countries which support Ukraine, added the director of the Zurich Opera. She has not sung in Russia. “That’s why we’re delighted that we can hear her again in Switzerland.”

Serial cancellations since 2022

After the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops in February 2022, the singer was criticised. Several concerts and opera performances in which she was due to take part were cancelled in the US and other Western countries.

The Russian soprano was no longer welcome in Switzerland either. Last June, a concert she was due to give at Lucerne’s KKL was cancelled at the request of the political authorities, who feared that her presence would lead to public disorder. The International Peace Conference in Ukraine was taking place the same month not far from there, at the Bürgenstock resort.

Anna Netrebko lives in Vienna. In 2014, the year the Russian army invaded Crimea, she appeared before media alongside a pro-Russian separatist leader and with a flag of New Russia, a colony of the former Russian Empire, which covered much of present-day Ukraine in the late 18th century. In 2021, she performed in the Kremlin.

According to her managers, the artist has made several statements in which “she opposes war and calls for peace in Ukraine”. On several occasions, she has distanced herself in writing from Putin.

Translated from French with DeepL/mga,dos

Following publication, Anna Netrebko’s manager requested the right to respond. In particular, he said, the 2014 incident referred to was an “unfortunate and unintended consequence”. According to Netrebko’s manager, the occasion was a press conference in St Petersburg to announce a donation by Netrebko to the singers and employees of the Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theatre. The person who was recruited to deliver the donations was “unbeknownst to [Netrebko], a separatist leader, who unexpectedly unfurled the flag in question,” he told SWI swissinfo.ch by email.

The article was also modified on April 11, 2025, to correct some minor factual errors.

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