World
Review: With Anthems and Flags, the Met Opera Plays for Ukraine
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Vladyslav Buialskyi stood heart stage on the Metropolitan Opera, his hand on his coronary heart, and sang the nationwide anthem of his nation, Ukraine.
That was on Feb. 28, when the home reopened after a month off from performing and the Russian invasion of Ukraine was just some days outdated. The corporate’s refrain and orchestra joined Buialskyi, a member of the Met’s younger artists program, in a message of solidarity with him and his struggling folks.
Precisely two weeks later, on Monday, Buialskyi, a 24-year-old bass-baritone from the besieged port metropolis of Berdyansk, stood heart stage as soon as extra, his hand once more on his coronary heart, and sang the anthem with the orchestra and refrain.
This time it wasn’t a prelude to Verdi’s “Don Carlos,” however the begin of “A Live performance for Ukraine,” an occasion rapidly organized by the Met to learn reduction efforts in that nation and broadcast there and world wide.
Banners forming the Ukrainian flag stretched throughout the travertine exterior of the theater, bathed in blue and yellow floodlights. One other flag hung above the stage; a number of within the viewers introduced their very own to unfurl from the balconies. Seated within the visitor of honor place within the heart of the parterre, Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, responded to an ovation at first by elevating his arms and making resolute V-for-victory indicators.
It has been a making an attempt time for the Met, which broke with Anna Netrebko, its reigning diva, over her unwillingness to talk in opposition to the struggle and distance herself from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
However the battle has additionally given the corporate — nonetheless bruised by labor battles regardless of exceptional success staying open throughout the Omicron wave — a way of unity and ethical objective. Who would have predicted a number of months in the past that the Met’s common supervisor, Peter Gelb, broadly reviled throughout the ranks for imposing a protracted unpaid furlough on many staff throughout the pandemic, would get applause from some within the orchestra as he declared from the stage that they have been “troopers of music”?
His remarks had a martial tinge, saying that the Met’s work could possibly be “weaponized in opposition to oppression.” However a lot of the live performance, led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the corporate’s music director, was consoling, with favorites like Barber’s Adagio for Strings, right here fevered and unsentimental, and “Va, pensiero” from Verdi’s “Nabucco,” with its refrain of exiles eager for their homeland, “so stunning and misplaced.” Strongest was Valentin Silvestrov’s delicate, modest a cappella “Prayer for the Ukraine,” written in 2014 amid the Maidan protests in opposition to Russian affect.
Richard Strauss’s “4 Final Songs” wasn’t fairly on message, with its autumnal imaginative and prescient of accepting demise’s imminence. Nevertheless it supplied a automobile for the Met’s prima donna of the second: the younger soprano Lise Davidsen, at present starring in Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos.”
At opening evening of “Ariadne” two weeks in the past, Davidsen saved inundating the theater, seeming intent on proving simply how a lot vibrating sound can stream out of her. It was thrilling, and a little bit a lot. On the efficiency of the opera on Saturday afternoon, she appeared consciously making an attempt to restrain herself — even a bit tentative, fumbling a phrase in her opening aria and solely step by step constructing to a real compromise of energy and nuance.
On Monday, Davidsen once more appeared to be discovering her method. Her excessive notes within the first of the “4 Final Songs,” “Frühling,” had a steely edge reasonably than hovering freedom; in “September,” she sounded muted in decrease registers; and in “Beim Schlafengehen,” her phrasing was stiff. However she started “Im Abendrot” with a comfortable cloud of tone and proceeded with unforced radiance to an ending that felt mild and hopeful.
Anna Netrebko. The famous person Russian soprano will not seem on the Metropolitan Opera this season or the following after failing to adjust to the corporate’s demand that she distance herself from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia within the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine.
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The soloists within the ultimate motion of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which closed the live performance, have been drawn from the Met’s present roster: The soprano Elza van den Heever is singing the title position in Handel’s “Rodelinda”; the mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, Eboli in “Don Carlos”; the tenor Piotr Beczala, Lensky in a coming revival of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”; the bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Inexperienced, a bit half in “Ariadne.”
Nézet-Séguin’s conducting on this well-known finale was neither grand nor affected person; when the orchestra is onstage on the Met reasonably than within the pit, the balances are usually not preferrred for wealthy unanimity, and the pacing was febrile, a bit scrappy. Nevertheless it was transferring to observe the face of Beczala, who’s from Poland, shift from stony focus to grinning. And the “Ode to Pleasure” inevitably makes an influence, significantly with Inexperienced declaiming the opening strains with such memorable defiance.
The anthem of the European Union, “Ode to Pleasure” is music for each inspiring event, however particularly for proper now. (Maybe it was the time to observe Leonard Bernstein, who, when main the work simply after the autumn of the Berlin Wall, changed the cries of “Freude,” or “pleasure,” with “Freiheit” — “freedom.”)
It’s value remembering, although, that whereas this anthem appeared so becoming on Monday, with the viewers streaming out of the Met coloured with the blue and yellow mild shining on the theater, it doesn’t all the time imply what a given listener needs it did. When Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic coruscated by way of the Ninth Symphony throughout World Battle II, the Germans thought Beethoven was writing for them. If the piece have been performed tonight in Moscow, the Russians may suppose the identical.
Nonetheless stirring, this music doesn’t choose sides, and it doesn’t change us. It makes us extra of what we’re.
A Live performance for Ukraine
Carried out on Monday on the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan.
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Taiwan issues travel advisory after China vows to execute independence supporters
![Taiwan issues travel advisory after China vows to execute independence supporters](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/05/xi_jinping.jpg)
The Taiwanese government warned its citizens not to travel to mainland China on Thursday after Beijing threatened to execute residents who support the island’s independence.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council spokesman Liang Wen-chieh issued the warning during a routine press conference. The Chinese government announced a new policy targeting “separatists” last week, and said it would pursue the death penalty for “diehard” supporters of Taiwanese independence.
“I want to stress: Democracy is not a crime; it’s autocracy that is the real evil. China has absolutely no right to sanction Taiwan’s people just because of the positions they hold. What’s more, China has no right to go after Taiwan people’s rights across borders,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Wednesday.
“I also want to call on China to face up to the existence of the Republic of China and have exchanges and dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected, legitimate government,” he said, using Taiwan’s formal name. “If this is not done, relations between Taiwan and China will only become more and more estranged.”
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The Taiwanese government warned its citizens not to travel to mainland China on Thursday after Beijing threatened to execute residents who support the island’s independence. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
China has long considered Taiwan to be its territory, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has threatened to take the island by force in recent years.
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China’s Taiwan Affairs Office clarified on Wednesday that the threat of execution applies only to a small number of Taiwanese independence “diehards’ evil words and actions.”
![Xi Jinping](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/05/1200/675/xi_jinping.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
China has long considered Taiwan to be its territory, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has threatened to take the island by force in recent years. (Szilard Koszticsak/MTI via AP)
The move is the latest escalation of tensions between Taipei and Beijing. Recent months have also seen China conduct extensive military drills surrounding the island. China has used the drills as intimidation, typically following events connecting the U.S. and Taiwan.
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China first conducted live-fire drills in 2022 after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. D-Calif., traveled to Taiwan. It was the first time a U.S. speaker visited the island in over 25 years.
![Chinese soldier looking through binoculars with a military ship in the background](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2022/08/1200/675/Taiwan-China-Military-Exercises-2.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Recent months have also seen China conduct extensive military drills surrounding the island, typically following events connecting the U.S. and Taiwan. (Lin Jian/Xinhua via AP)
Beijing’s execution threat comes just days after the U.S. approved the sale of $360 million in drones, missiles and other equipment to Taiwan.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Serbian police shut down cultural exchange festival with Kosovo
![Serbian police shut down cultural exchange festival with Kosovo](https://static.euronews.com/articles/stories/08/53/59/96/1200x675_cmsv2_0bfb757c-8481-503b-8547-5b03b8feb345-8535996.jpg)
The festival ban comes a day after the EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell said no progress had been made during talks in Brussels towards implementing an EU-backed agreement towards normalising ties between Belgrade and Pristina.
Serbian police have banned a festival that promotes cultural exchange with Kosovo following a rally by far-right protesters outside the venue.
In a statement, Belgrade police cited security concerns as the reasons for stopping the event from going ahead, saying they wanted to prevent ‘danger to the security of people and property and to public peace and order on a larger scale.’
The police statement also said that the anti-festival protest, which saw several dozen right-wing extremists gather outside the festival venue, waving Serbian flags and banners saying ‘No surrender’, had also been banned.
Several Serbian government officials have sharply criticised the festival in recent days, describing it as anti-Serb.
While the festival has been held alternatively in Serbia and Kosovo for the past decade, this year’s ban in Serbia illustrates a general toughening of the government’s stance toward its critics.
The Mirëdita, dobar dan festival, whose name means ‘hello’ in Albanian and Serbian, is organised by youth groups from Serbia and Kosovo and was due to open on Thursday with a theatre show from Kosovo.
According to the festival’s website the event, which was due to run for two days, aims to ‘enrich regional perspectives and foster cooperation and peacebuilding’.
No progress
The festival ban came a day after the EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell said no progress had been made during talks in Brussels towards implementing an agreement between Belgrade and Pristina.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti had met to discuss an EU-backed plan to normalise ties. However, unresolved issues, including Pristina’s demands that Belgrade hands over the suspected organisers of the Banjska attack, blocked further progress.
Speaking after the meetings, Borrell said that the European Union will continue to exert all its efforts and capacity to normalise relations between Belgrade and Pristina.
“Kosovo was not ready for this, Kosovo was not willing to do this trilateral meeting. Serbia was ready to do it, but you need two to dance tango and we need two to sit around the table in order to continue the dialogue,” Borrell added.
Borrell said on Wednesday ahead of the meeting that a new round of dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina would “hopefully send a different message and end in a different note.”
Brussels has warned both Belgrade and Pristina that refusal to compromise jeopardises Serbia and Kosovo’s chances of joining the bloc.
Kosovo, a former Serbian province, declared independence in 2008, a move Belgrade does not recognise.
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