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      Russia Puts Jamala, Popular Ukrainian Singer, on Wanted List

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      Jamala, the song contest’s 2016 champion, had been a prominent advocate for Crimea’s Tatar population. The region was annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014.Russia has added a popular Ukrainian singer who won the Eurovision song contest seven years ago to its wanted list, as Moscow expands its efforts to target cultural figures who have been critical of its invasion of Ukraine.The singer, known professionally as Jamala, appeared in the Russian Interior Ministry’s wanted database under the name Susana A. Dzhamaladinova. Her name appeared to have been added to the list in October but was publicized in the Russian media on Monday.The listing did not specify the accusations against her, but according to Zona Media, a Russian news website, Jamala, 40, has been accused by the authorities of spreading false information about the Russian Army’s activities.The action is likely to have little more than symbolic impact for the singer, who lives in Ukraine. Jamala, who is currently in Australia, reacted to the news by posting a picture of herself in front of the Sydney Opera House on Instagram with a face-palm emoji superimposed.The Ukrainian singer is of Crimean Tatar origin, and she has been a prominent advocate of the Tatar people who are native to the Crimean Peninsula but who were deported in large numbers when the region was part of the Soviet Union. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 after a popular uprising ousted a Russia-leaning president in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.Jamala won the Eurovision song contest in 2016 with a song dedicated to the Crimean Tatars who were deported in the 1940s after they were accused of cooperating with Nazi Germany. Her ancestors were deported to Central Asia, where she was born.“No matter where I am, the first priority for me is to remind that foreigners came to my house to kill and mutilate life, to destroy and rewrite my culture,” Jamala told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Nov. 2022. “It happened in 1944, and then in 2014, and now again,” she said. “Now everyone in Ukraine understands that this can happen to anyone, if evil is not stopped and brought to justice for crime.”Ukraine has been using Crimean Tatar heritage to counterbalance Russian cultural domination of the region, which became part of the Russian empire after it was conquered in the 18th century. In 1954, the peninsula was transferred from Russian to Ukrainian authority within the Soviet Union.The targeting of Jamala appears to be part of a campaign by Moscow to silence activists who refuse to accept its rule of Crimea and who oppose the war against Ukraine — both within Russia and beyond its borders.According to Izvestia, a Russian newspaper, more than 30 Ukrainian artists had been banned from entering Russia as of April 2022.At least a dozen popular Russian artists who publicly condemned the invasion of Ukraine were declared “foreign agents,” a term that stigmatized them as being on the payroll of foreign governments. Many other artists were prohibited from performing in the country.Russia has also stepped up efforts to create its own popular-music market, after being essentially shut out of the European one — including the Eurovision contest — after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.Last week, Olga B. Lyubimova, Russia’s culture minister, announced the creation of the country’s own popular song contest, called Intervision, according to Interfax, a Russian news agency. It will share its name with the communist equivalent to the Eurovision song contest during the Soviet era. More

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      Yuri Temirkanov, Conductor Who Celebrated Russia’s Music, Dies at 84

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      Immersed in his native land’s repertoire — Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev — he drew bold, rich sounds from the world’s major orchestras. In Russia, he was adored.Yuri Temirkanov, a well-traveled Russian conductor steeped in his country’s bygone musical culture, died on Nov. 2 in St. Petersburg, the city where he held sway for over 30 years. He was 84.His death was announced by both the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, where he was music director from 1988 to 2022 — his tenure began when it was still the Leningrad Philharmonic — and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, where he was music director from 2000 to 2006. A close associate in Baltimore said Mr. Temirkanov had had heart trouble and had died in a care facility.When he was a boy, Prokofiev had held his hand; in his prime, he was artistic director of one of the world’s great opera companies, the Kirov, in what was then Leningrad, taking that post before he was 40; and in his later years, he consulted with Shostakovich, conducted some of the world’s major orchestras, and was the object of almost cultlike adoration in his native land.At a glittering memorial service for him on Sunday in the columned hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, his coffin lay open as the orchestra played Tchaikovsky.In the Russian repertoire with which he was most closely associated — Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev — Mr. Temirkanov drew bold, rich sounds from his orchestras, each phrase laden with meaning. But he also found subtleties in the understated works of Haydn.Critics praised his ability to shape extended lines with minimal hand gestures — he eschewed the baton — but were puzzled by what some called his unpredictability and inconsistency. And he created an uproar in 2012 when he declared to a Russian interviewer that women shouldn’t be conductors because it was “counter to nature.” A woman, he explained, “should be beautiful, likable, attractive. Musicians will look at her and be distracted from the music!”His handpicked associate conductor in Baltimore, Lara Webber, said in a phone interview that those words were “completely incoherent with the experience I had.”Mr. Temirkanov, she said, was a “really supportive boss” and a “tremendously empathetic humanist.”Mr. Temirkanov largely tried to steer clear of politics; he once insisted to the British critic Norman Lebrecht that while living in the Soviet Union he never joined the Communist Party. But he told the critic Time Smith of The Baltimore Sun in 2004 that President Vladimir V. Putin was a “very good friend, very good.” Mr. Smith noted that Mr. Temirkanov had successfully lobbied Mr. Putin for funding and that he was the first recipient of a new medal created by the president.Mr. Temirkanov after his farewell concert with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore in 2006.Brendan Smialowski for The New York TimesGregory Tucker, who had become close to Mr. Temirkanov as publicity director for the Baltimore orchestra, said that as Russian orchestras faced financial crisis in the post-Soviet era, Mr. Temirkanov “had a very frank discussion with Putin, that if the state doesn’t step up, these institutions won’t survive.”To his American associates, Mr. Temirkanov was a mysterious but compelling presence, a visitor from the lost world of the Soviet Union’s last years and a disciple of old modes of music instruction that now barely exist. The Baltimore Sun critic Stephen Wigler noted in 1999 that Mr. Temirkanov “doesn’t own a TV set and doesn’t even know how to drive a car.”He spoke English but hardly used it, and he did not go out of his way to cultivate audiences, though those who knew him in Baltimore said that this was less a sign of aloofness than of shyness.“My back must be to the audience, not to the orchestra,” he told The Sun. “When I conduct, I am like an actor, I am talking to the audience, but the words belong to the composer, and I am just the vessel through which they pass.”In 2005, the critic Anne Midgette wrote in The New York Times: “‘Unpredictable’ is a word that has consistently cropped up in assessments of Mr. Temirkanov’s work. And it seems to apply not only to his conducting — which he does without a baton, using circular hand motions that can seem enigmatic to outsiders — but also to his musical tastes and, indeed, to the man in general.”He was known to audiences around the world. Over his career he variously conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the London Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, among other ensembles.His arrival in Baltimore was greeted with some astonishment: A world-class conductor was coming to an orchestra that, although considered good, was not in the country’s top five. The city had “landed a big one,” a Sun editorial said in 1997. The tone was set for an awed and respectful relationship.For the musicians who played under Mr. Temirkanov in Baltimore, the experience was unlike any they had had with any other conductor.“He was very much into expressiveness, through hands and body movements,” Jonathan Carney, the Baltimore Symphony’s concertmaster, said in a phone interview. “It was like a ballet, watching him. He was not into controlling an orchestra. He was trying to entice us to go into a certain direction. For me, it was like watching a poet on the podium.”That Mr. Temirkanov used few words only added to his aura and helped create a “certain almost fear that you would have,” Michael Lisicky, the orchestra’s second oboist, recalled. Yet, he said by phone, “he would sing the phrase back to you. Everything, when he sang it back to you, it made sense.”“You never knew what he was thinking,” Mr. Lisicky said. “He kind of gives you these hand gestures, as if he was blessing you.”In an interview from his home in Prague, the pianist Evgeny Kissin, who played with Mr. Temirkanov many times over the years, said simply, “He was an extraordinary man.”Mr. Temirkanov conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra during a rehearsal in London in 1979. He was named the orchestra’s principal guest conductor in 1980 and later became its principal conductor.Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesYuri Khatuyevich Temirkanov was born on Dec. 10, 1938, in Nalchik, the capital of the southern Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, in the Caucasus. He was the son of Khatu Sagidovich Temirkanov, the republic’s culture minister, and Polia Petrovna Temirkanova. His father was shot and killed by the Nazis when Germany invaded Russia in 1941; shortly before that, Sergei Prokofiev and his wife, who were evacuees, had stayed with the family.Mr. Temirkanov studied violin at the Leningrad Conservatory, graduating in 1965. He won a prestigious Soviet competition in 1968 and was named music director of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra the next year.After becoming director of the Kirov Opera in 1977, he was named principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London in 1980. (He would later become the orchestra’s principal conductor.) In 1988, he was named principal conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic (later the St. Petersburg Philharmonic).Mr. Temirkanov remained active as a conductor roughly until the onset of Covid in 2020, Mr. Tucker said.Mr. Temirkanov’s son, Vladimir, a violinist in the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and his wife, Irina Guseva, died before him. No immediate family members survive. More

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      Rock Brynner, 76, Son of Hollywood Royalty Who Cut His Own Path, Dies

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      The only male child of the actor Yul Brynner, he built a peripatetic career as a writer, historian, novelist, playwright — and roadie for the Band.Rock Brynner, whose life as a road manager for the Band, bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, farmer, pilot, street performer, novelist and professor of constitutional history overshadowed what, for a lesser mortal, might be a more than sufficient laurel on which to rest — he was the son of the actor Yul Brynner — died on Oct. 13 in Salisbury, Conn. He was 76.Maria Cuomo Cole, a close friend, said the cause of his death, in a hospice, was complications of multiple myeloma.Like many children of the rich and famous, Mr. Brynner led a charmed life. His father, a Russian émigré, was best known for his starring role in both the stage and screen versions of the musical “The King and I,” and later played lead Hollywood roles as a gunfighter, a Russian general and, in “The Ten Commandments,” Pharaoh Rameses II. A-list glamour encircled the son: Liza Minnelli was a lifelong friend from childhood; Elizabeth Taylor came to all his parties. The French poet and playwright Jean Cocteau was his godfather.But Rock Brynner did more with his silver spoon than most. A gifted student, he attended Yale, Trinity College Dublin and Columbia, where he received a doctorate in American history in 1993 before teaching for over a decade at Marist College, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.In between his stints on campus, he shifted in and out of various milieus and demimondes. He wrote a one-man play based on Cocteau’s addiction memoir, “Opium,” which he performed briefly on Broadway in 1970. Afterward he traveled around Europe as a mime, a period in which he struggled with his own drug and alcohol problems — a theme that fueled his first novel, “The Ballad of Habit and Accident” (1981).Mr. Brynner, left, with his father, the actor Yul Brynner, and the entrepreneur Isaac Tigrett at the opening of the Hard Rock Cafe in Manhattan in March 1984. When Mr. Tigrett opened the restaurant, he hired the younger Mr. Brynner to be the manager.Mitchell Tapper/Associated PressMr. Brynner had a penchant for falling into celebrity orbits. While still in Europe he joined the entourage of Muhammad Ali, who was on something of a world tour after being stripped of his heavyweight championship title over his antiwar stance. Ali called him his “bodyguard,” even though Mr. Brynner was much shorter and slighter than the deposed champ.“Who’d ever have thunk,” Mr. Brynner recalled Ali joking, “that the son of the pharaoh of Egypt would be protecting a little Black boy from Louisville?”Mr. Brynner was no mere hanger-on: He worked as Ali’s press liaison, and it was in part thanks to him, and his connections in Dublin, that Ali was able to fight a high-profile bout against Al “Blue” Lewis in that city in 1972.After returning to the United States and largely sobering up, Mr. Brynner made friends with Robbie Robertson, the guitarist and chief songwriter for the Band, and for a time drove the group’s tour bus.When Mr. Robertson expressed interest in making a rock documentary, Mr. Brynner, by his account, put him in touch with another friend, the director Martin Scorsese. The result, in 1978, was “The Last Waltz,” widely considered one of the best concert documentaries ever made.Mr. Brynner rarely stayed in a single role for long. One day in the early 1970s he was hanging out at a London hotel bar when he met an entrepreneur named Isaac Tigrett, who had an idea for a rock ’n’ roll-themed restaurant.The two became close friends, and Mr. Brynner and his father became early investors in the Hard Rock Cafe, founded by Mr. Tigrett and Peter Morton, whose father had started the Morton’s steakhouse chain. When Mr. Tigrett expanded to New York in 1984, he hired Mr. Brynner as manager. The restaurant was, for a time, the place to see and be seen in Manhattan, and Mr. Brynner proved more than capable of handling all the boldfaced names angling for a table.“He grew up with celebrities, traveled with celebrities,” Mr. Tigrett said in a phone interview. “He knew this scene well.”Mr. Brynner with Liza Minnelli during a party at a Manhattan restaurant in 1981. They had been friends since childhood.Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesMr. Brynner managed to stay at the Hard Rock Cafe for a year before becoming restless once more. He had always wanted to own a plane, he told Mr. Tigrett. He and his father used their profits from the restaurant to open a charter air service, based at a small airport in Danbury, Conn., not far from the Westchester farm where Rock was now living in a guesthouse, free of charge in exchange for working its small field of vegetables.By the mid-1980s, with his wild days behind him, Mr. Brynner returned to his intellectual pursuits. He wrote a biography of his father, “Yul: The Man Who Would Be King” (1989), while completing his doctorate in American history at Columbia, with a specialty in constitutional history.The biography, which appeared four years after Yul Brynner’s death at 65, exploded certain myths that his father had told about himself (he did not, as he claimed, descend from Roma stock). But it also painted a portrait of a complicated man, whose immense ego sometimes got in the way of his genuine love for his only son — and of how that son struggled under the weight.“It is a study of how a son models himself on his father,” Rock Brynner said in a 1991 radio interview, “and then must distance himself later in life.”Yul Brynner Jr. was born on Dec. 23, 1946, in Manhattan. His father, still a struggling actor, was away in California looking for stage work, while his mother, Virginia Gilmore — who would also achieve cinematic fame — kept house in a small apartment on East 38th Street, above a dry cleaner’s.There was no question what the boy’s first name would be: “In our family,” Yul Brynner Sr. said, “Yul is not just a name. It is a title.” But he also gave his son the nickname Rock, after the boxer Rocky Graziano, in a bid to toughen him up for the rough streets of New York.Rock lived a wandering childhood, following his father’s career from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles and, finally, to Switzerland, where he attended the International School of Geneva, a famed boarding school.He enrolled at Yale, but after a year transferred to Trinity College Dublin — in part because, he later said, he was enthralled with the work of Samuel Beckett, whom he had met, and that of James Joyce, who might be one of the few 20th-century notables whom he did not.He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1969 and received a master’s in the same subject, also from Trinity, in 1972.Mr. Brynner’s marriage to Linda Ridgway, in 1973, ended in divorce. He married Elisabeth Coleman in 1978; they also later divorced. He is survived by his sisters, Victoria, Mia and Melody Brynner and Lark Bryner, who uses the original spelling of the family name.Mr. Brynner explored his family’s Eastern Russian roots in a 2006 book.via Distinct PressAfter receiving his doctorate, Mr. Brynner taught at Marist and at Western Connecticut State University. He also continued to write. Along with another novel, “The Doomsday Report” (1998), a prophetic satire about climate change, he wrote about the controversial drug thalidomide (“Dark Remedy: The Impact of Thalidomide and Its Revival as a Vital Medicine,” 2001); his family’s roots in eastern Russia (“Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond,” 2006); and, with Andrew Cuomo, the brother of Maria Cuomo Cole, who was governor of New York at the time, state water policy (“Natural Power: The New York Power Authority’s Origins and Path to Clean Energy,” 2016).Thanks to his research on eastern Russia, the State Department sent Mr. Brynner on several lecture tours in the region. There he paid tribute to his family by helping open a Brynner museum and unveil a statue of his father in Vladivostok, where the elder Mr. Brynner was born.“Yes, it’s difficult for the children of iconic figures to establish independent identities,” he told The New York Times in 2001. “But with all the suffering in this world, I wouldn’t shed too many tears for those who had privileged youths.” More

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      Anna Netrebko Sues Met Opera After Losing Work Over Support of Putin

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      Seeking at least $360,000, the singer accused the storied opera house of discrimination, defamation and breach of contract. The company disputed her claims.The star Russian soprano Anna Netrebko filed a lawsuit on Friday against the Metropolitan Opera, seeking at least $360,000 in compensation for work she lost when the company parted ways with her after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Netrebko was fired by the Met last year after refusing to denounce Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, whom she had publicly supported in the years before the invasion. In the complaint, she accuses the Met of discriminating against her because she is Russian; of issuing “defamatory” statements about her in the press; and of breaching contracts by not paying her for some lost work.The Met disputed her claims. “Ms. Netrebko’s lawsuit has no merit,” the company said in a statement.Netrebko has in recent months taken aim at the Met, filing a complaint last year through the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing opera performers.In February, an arbitrator in that dispute ordered the Met to pay her more than $200,000 for 13 canceled performances because of a contractual agreement known as “pay or play,” which requires institutions to pay performers even if they later decide not to engage them. The Met had argued that Ms. Netrebko was not entitled to payment because of her refusal to comply with the company’s demand that she denounce Mr. Putin, which the company said had violated its conduct clause.Still, the arbitrator refused Ms. Netrebko’s request for an additional $400,000 in fees for engagements in coming seasons that had been discussed but not formally agreed to, including leading roles in Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” and “Tosca,” as well as Verdi’s “Macbeth” and Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades.” Ms. Netrebko was earning the Met’s current fee for top artists of about $15,000 a performance.The complaint filed by Ms. Netrebko on Friday said that the Met still owed her most of those additional fees, as well as compensation for emotional distress and damage to her reputation. The complaint accuses the Met and its general manager, Peter Gelb, who has been critical of Ms. Netrebko in the news media, of leading a “defamatory crusade” against her.The suit notes that even after she publicly stated that she opposed the war, Mr. Gelb spoke with her on the phone and asked her to specifically denounce Mr. Putin. “Gelb indicated that if Netrebko issued such a statement, the Met would continue its relationship with her,” the suit said. “Netrebko responded that, as a Russian citizen, she could not make such a statement.”The complaint is the latest effort by Netrebko, a major star and box-office draw, to rehabilitate her image. Netrebko still has a busy international performing schedule, largely in Europe. But since the invasion, she has faced cancellations and protests elsewhere, including in the United States and parts of Asia.She has struggled to get beyond questions about her past support for Putin. She endorsed him for president in 2012, and has spoken glowingly about him over the years. And in 2014, when she donated to an opera house in Donetsk, a war-torn city in Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists, she was photographed holding a separatist flag.Since the invasion, Ms. Netrebko has sought to distance herself from Putin, saying they have only met a few times.Mr. Gelb has defended the Met’s decision to cut ties with Ms. Netrebko and other artists who have voiced support for Mr. Putin. “It’s more important than ever that our position does not change,” he said earlier this year, “until the war is won by Ukraine.”Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

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      ‘20 Days in Mariupol’ Review: Ukrainian City Under Siege

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      While the Ukrainian city was under siege by Russian forces, a team of journalists recorded the brutal war, resulting in this essential documentary.Everyone else was gone: the authorities, the aid workers, the other journalists too. One week into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov was still in the port city of Mariupol, watching from a high floor of a hospital as a tank emblazoned with a white Z pulled up alongside. Smoke kept rising, bitter and black, from the shelled housing blocks a short distance away. There was no way out. Mariupol was surrounded now. Chernov kept his cameras rolling.“20 Days in Mariupol,” a relentless and truly important documentary, engulfs us in the initial ferocity of Russia’s siege of a city whose name has become a byword for this war’s inhumanity: My Lai, Srebrenica, Aleppo, Mariupol. The A.P. journalists were the last from an international news organization in the city, and for three weeks they documented pregnant women fleeing a bombed maternity hospital, the elderly and the displaced boiling snow to obtain fresh water, the freshly dug ditches where children’s corpses were laid to rest. The reporting would win Chernov, along with his colleagues Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko and Lori Hinnant, this year’s Pulitzer Prize for public service, but because internet connections were sparse to absent in the city, Chernov could only transmit a small fraction of his footage during the siege. It all comes out in “20 Days in Mariupol,” in which the battle to survive in southeast Ukraine becomes entwined with the struggle to tell the world what’s happening.This film is very hard to watch, and so it should be, though its episodic structure makes it somewhat easier to endure: Day 1 through Day 20, one at a time, from the first bombs to the team’s flight to safety. On the morning of Feb. 24, Chernov and his colleagues head toward Mariupol, a city of half a million people on the Sea of Azov, and drive by Ukrainian military bases whose antiaircraft systems are burning — the first Russian targets, to prepare the path of their war planes. Many residents doubted the violence would reach Mariupol, and evacuation trains were leaving the city half-empty. Now we follow them into improvised shelters: a cold cellar, a CrossFit gym. “I don’t want to die,” says one young boy. “I wish it would all end soon.”But by Day 4 the fighter jets are overhead, and Chernov is stationed at one of Mariupol’s remaining open hospitals, about a mile from the front line on the edge of the city. He’s there when an ambulance rushes up, and paramedics perform C.P.R. on a 4-year-old girl named Evangelina, severely injured after a Russian shell landed near her home. The medics race her to the modest emergency room, where her blood pools on the floor as they try, and fail, to resuscitate her. (Chernov blurs out her face here, though The A.P. published uncensored images at the time.) “Keep filming,” the head doctor insists — and a minute later, we see the same footage of the doctors at work in grainy reproduction on an MSNBC broadcast and Britain’s ITV News.This blending of high- and low-resolution video registers is a critical tool of Chernov and his editor, Michelle Mizner of “Frontline,” who in many chapters of “20 Days in Mariupol” suture together three kinds of imagery. First comes drone footage of the city — its Khrushchev-era housing blocks, its huge Azovstal steel plant — whose devastation becomes more visible as winter passes to spring. Then follows unique documentation of the war’s early atrocities, shot on high-definition video, but often askew or rocky as Chernov runs after a hospital gurney or flees from the aim of snipers. Finally, at the end of many days, the footage repeats as broadcasts on CBS News, France 24, Deutsche Welle and other AP clients.Even if they feel a touch self-congratulatory, these rebroadcasts underscore two things: the rarity of Chernov’s footage, and the immense challenge of getting it out of Mariupol. The port city’s internet is basically gone by Day 11, when the Russians blockade it from all three sides, and the A.P. journalists risk their lives to hunt for wireless connections after curfew. And there is the matter of Chernov’s nationality. Though he has covered wars in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, he is a native of Kharkiv, Ukraine, and as he whispers at the start of the film, “I have no illusions about what will happen to us if we are caught.”Day 20 comes, and with it a harrowing drive past a dozen Russian checkpoints, with the journalists hiding cameras and hard drives under the seats. One day later, on March 16, 2022, Russian forces bomb the city’s Drama Theater, where hundreds of adults and children have taken shelter. This documentary is more, therefore, than a unique record of particular crimes; it’s a synecdoche for a much larger atrocity, and a model of how we discover the larger truth of war in images of one hospital, one grave, one child.“With every new war, the ethics of war photography are debated again,” regretted the Ukrainian art historian Kateryna Iakovlenko in a recent essay on our self-serving doubt of depictions of horror, made acuter through Russia’s parallel disinformation campaigns. The only moral question before us is whether we take these images seriously, or whether, with a skepticism also known as cowardice, we turn away.20 Days in MariupolNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      A Finnish Official Plays the Cello to Support Ukraine, Irking Russia

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      Anders Adlercreutz’s recording of a patriotic Ukrainian song was widely circulated online, and prompted a response from Moscow.Anders Adlercreutz, Finland’s minister for European affairs, has long been a critic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, denouncing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for leading a “crazy war” and calling on Western governments to send tanks to Kyiv.On Sunday, Mr. Adlercreutz tried a different tactic: he posted a video of himself on social media playing a patriotic Ukrainian song on the cello to mark the conflict’s 500th day. The video also shows images of bombed buildings, juxtaposed with phrases like “unspeakable aggression,” as well as hopeful symbols like sunflower fields and a dove in flight.500 days of unprovoked aggression, countless war crimes, lost futures – but also of encouraging success. Ukraine fights for its independence, but also for Europe’s. Finland stands by you, today and tomorrow.В пам’ять про тих, хто віддав своє життя за свободу. pic.twitter.com/P5D9WpPH39— Anders Adlercreutz (@adleande) July 9, 2023
      “I wanted to provide comfort to Ukrainians here in Finland and in other countries,” Mr. Adlercreutz said in an interview, “and to make clear that they are not ignored, and their culture, their music and their language is not forgotten.”To his surprise, the video garnered more than a million views across a variety of platforms, and he received a flood of comments from Ukrainians moved by the performance.Russian officials tried to portray the video as part of an effort by Western countries to sway public opinion ahead of a NATO meeting this week that was attended by President Biden and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. (Finland became the alliance’s 31st member state in April, a strategic defeat for Mr. Putin.)In a television appearance this week, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, denounced the NATO meeting as a “colorful performance” that was “in the worst traditions of Western manipulation,” according to Russian news reports. She went on to say that “Finnish government ministers are recording cello solos in support of Ukraine.” Russia has in recent months been highly critical of Finland for joining NATO, saying it has “forfeited its independence.”The video features the Ukrainian song “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” written during World War I, which has long been associated with Ukraine’s fight for independence.Since the invasion, the song has emerged as a popular anthem for the Ukrainian cause. A few days into the war, the Ukrainian musician Andriy Khlyvnyuk, from the band Boombox, recorded a defiant rendition with a rifle slung across his chest.Last year, Pink Floyd released a reworked version of the song, featuring Mr. Khlyvnyuk, to raise money for the people of Ukraine, its first new track in almost three decades.Since the invasion, Ukrainians have used music to bring attention to suffering, following in a tradition of impromptu performances by ordinary citizens in war zones, in the Balkans, Syria and elsewhere. A cellist last year performed Bach in the center of a deserted street in Kharkiv, with the blown-out windows of the regional police headquarters behind him.Mr. Adlercreutz, who began studying cello as an 11-year-old, said he had been inspired by Ukrainian musicians, including Mr. Khlyvnyuk. He recorded “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow” in February at the Parliament House in Helsinki, playing different musical lines that he later mixed together.He said it was important to use culture to bring attention to Ukraine.“I want to send the message to Ukrainians that we see you, we recognize you, we support you, and we don’t forget where you are coming from and what you are going through,” he said. “We can easily forget the war, but this is a message that we really have to repeat.” More

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      A Russian Pianist Speaks Out Against the War From Home

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      Polina Osetinskaya, a critic of the invasion who has stayed in Moscow even as the government cracks down on dissent, will play a Baroque program in New York.When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the pianist Polina Osetinskaya, who lives in Moscow, was distraught. She took to social media to describe a sense of “horror, shame and disgust,” and expressed solidarity with Ukraine, where she had often performed.But unlike many artists, activists and intellectuals, Osetinskaya, 47, decided to remain in Russia, where she lives with her three children, even as the Kremlin cracked down on free expression and made clear that any contradiction of the government’s statements on the invasion could be treated as a crime. She has faced consequences for her views — some concerts at state-run halls have been canceled, while others have been interrupted by the authorities.Osetinskaya, who was born in Moscow, says her international career has also suffered because of her Russian identity. She lost some overseas engagements after the invasion, she says, because presenters were nervous about featuring Russian citizens. As a result, she says that she often feels caught in the middle: seen suspiciously both inside and outside her country.Osetinskaya will perform a program of Bach, Handel, Purcell and Rameau at the 92nd Street Y in New York on Saturday, part of a five-city tour organized by the Cherry Orchard Festival, which promotes global cultural exchange. The program explores Baroque masterpieces featured in movies like “The Godfather” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”In between concerts and rehearsals this week, she discussed her opposition to the war, the role of music in healing and her decision to remain in Moscow. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.You’ve made the difficult decision to stay in Russia even as you criticize the war. Why have you continued to speak out?This is a huge tragedy that is happening in my soul every day. Some of my friends tell me, “Take this war out of your heart, it’s not your problem.” I think it’s our problem. A lot of us, in the beginning, didn’t think it would turn out this way. Being Russian now is kind of like being crucified in the eyes of a lot of people. But I know that there are Russians who are truly against the war and against what is happening.I want people to know that there are a lot of people like this in Russia. And they’ve been put in prison for their views, or for their likes on Facebook. And they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost their freedom just for openly expressing their opinions. I want people to know that there are a lot of good Russians, if I may say so.“I was born in 1975 and remember the repression that was in the Soviet Union. And I have a feeling like I’m back in this time.”Lyndon French for The New York TimesAre you concerned about your own safety?I was born in 1975 and remember the repression that was in the Soviet Union. And I have a feeling like I’m back in this time. And that’s what makes me so sad. We have so many opportunities to grow, to be a part of a world community, and instead we’re still repeating our own story, and it’s not the best pages of our story.Right now, I’m playing private concerts in Moscow because big halls are closed for me. I truly hope that I won’t be put in jail for my views and opinions. Every time I talk openly about my feelings, I’m being watched. All I need now is to be able to work, to feed my children, and not to be afraid that I might be a political prisoner.In March, the authorities in Moscow interrupted a concert in which you and several other artists were playing works by Shostakovich and Mieczysław Weinberg.The police ran into the concert hall in the middle of the performance, and they said they got a call that there was a bomb inside. And they asked everyone to to leave. And everybody stepped out onto the rainy street, and the police went inside with the bomb-sniffing dogs. And the audience stayed with me — there under the rain — and nobody left. And when finally the police hadn’t found any bombs, obviously, we got back to the hall and we continued the concert.How did that experience make you feel?At that moment, I was completely broken because I had the feeling that I had been struggling for months for the possibility to play, and it was interrupted. But I remembered the people who have been thanking me for not leaving Russia. People write me letters telling me that they don’t feel abandoned because I’m here. Many of the artists have left.Did you have any hesitations about speaking out when the war first started?On the first day of the war, I woke up at 7 a.m. because I was making my children breakfast and taking them to school. And I opened my eyes and I saw a post on Facebook by my friend that said, “Oh God, No! No!” I immediately understood what was going on. I just couldn’t believe it was happening. I never had the idea that I could keep silent. I had to scream.What do you hope audiences will take away from your tour in the United States this week?Baroque music very much suits our time because it has so much drama, so much tragedy, so much power, so much consolation at the same time. It sounds like it was written just now. The music that I am playing makes us look into ourselves, feel empathy to anyone who is suffering right now, including ourselves, and gives us hope. That’s what we need probably most right now. When the war started, this program made so much sense. I want as many people as possible to hear this music.Do you think your words and music can have an impact?I feel a little bit useless. I have no power to stop the war. I have no power to do anything to change things. But playing music and touching the keyboard — that’s the only thing I can do to solve my own pain and to solve other people’s pain.It’s dangerous to say this right now, but I have to say that I love Russia. I can separate Russia — my country, my homeland, the beautiful people who live there — from the government and from the people who are making decisions. I can tell one from the other, but it seems to me that nobody else can.Life is not just black and white like my keyboard. It has a lot of colors and it has a lot of shades. We should remember people’s feelings and souls. More

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      Now Playing in China: Putin-Aligned Artists Shunned in the West

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      As Russia works to shore up its image and rebuild its soft power after its invasion of Ukraine, it is strengthening cultural ties with friendly nations, including China.Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the star Russian maestro Valery Gergiev has been persona non grata in the United States and Europe, fired by many cultural institutions because of his long record of support for President Vladimir V. Putin, his friend and benefactor.But this week, on the heels of a summit between Mr. Putin and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Moscow, Mr. Gergiev received a hero’s welcome in Beijing, where he appeared with the Mariinsky Orchestra for the ensemble’s first foreign tour since Russia invaded Ukraine.Chinese fans showered Mr. Gergiev with cards and bouquets, calling him by his nickname in China, “brother-in-law,” a play on the Chinese version of his surname. Audiences cheered his Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, as well as a surprise rendition of a Chinese Communist classic, “Ode to the Red Flag.” The state-run news media hailed the visit as the beginning of a new era of Russia-China cultural ties.During the tour Mr. Gergiev rebuked his Western critics and vowed to redouble his efforts to promote Russian culture around the world.“It is not Russian music that is facing challenges,” he said at a news conference at China’s National Center for the Performing Arts. “It is the people who think they can stop Russian music.”The Ukraine war has badly damaged Russia’s cultural engine, which once sent ballet dancers from the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky to the world’s leading stages and brought Russian soloists, opera singers and conductors like Mr. Gergiev to leading concert halls and theaters in the United States and Europe.Now, with artists who are seen as too close to Mr. Putin being shunned in the West, Russia is working to shore up its image and rebuild its soft power elsewhere, strengthening cultural alliances with friendly nations and neighbors, including China, the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan and Serbia, with mixed results.Mr. Gergiev’s tour came on the heels of a recent summit in Moscow between China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Sputnik, via ReutersThe Bolshoi Ballet, the storied company whose name is synonymous with ballet, is considering two tours of China this year. The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, an art institution, is working to open a sister branch in Serbia, after losing partnerships in the West because of the invasion. A St. Petersburg ballet company recently brought two works by the Russian choreographer Boris Eifman, “Anna Karenina” and “The Pygmalion Effect,” to Kazakhstan. Star Russian musicians who were once regulars in New York and Berlin, including the pianist Denis Matsuev, who was seen as close to Mr. Putin, are booking engagements instead in Dubai, Istanbul and Belgrade, Serbia, among other cities.China, with its legions of concertgoers and skepticism of Western ideals, has emerged as an attractive market for Russian artists aligned with Mr. Putin. While the two countries have long had cultural ties — Mr. Gergiev has been visiting the country for decades — the timing of his visit, coming a week after the meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, suggested Russia and China were eager for a fresh display of camaraderie as they work to counter American dominance.“Russia is looking for cultural exchanges wherever it can get them, just as it is looking for allies in technology, energy and the military,” Simon Morrison, a specialist in Russian music at Princeton University, said. “Putin is desperate to show that Russia still has friends.”Russia’s attempts to use culture to soften its image abroad face significant challenges, even in friendly countries, experts say, because of its continuing attacks on Ukraine.Classical music, dance, theater and visual art were “some of the last bridges between Russia and the West,” said Vera Ageeva, an international relations scholar at Sciences Po in France. But the disappearance of these cultural exports presents a “huge, incalculable loss for Russia and its soft power,” she said, which cannot be offset simply by expanding cultural ties with allies.Protesters outside an Anna Netrebko concert in Paris last spring.James Hill for The New York TimesAfter Russia invaded Ukraine, cultural institutions in the United States and Europe rushed to cut ties with Russian artists and institutions aligned with Mr. Putin, upending decades of cultural exchange that had endured even during the depths of the Cold War.The Bolshoi and Mariinsky faced cancellations in London, Madrid, New York and elsewhere; a popular program to broadcast Bolshoi performances into more than 1,700 movie theaters in 70 countries and territories was suspended. And several Russian stars with ties to Mr. Putin lost work in the West, including the soprano Anna Netrebko, Mr. Matsuev and Mr. Gergiev, who was fired as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic.While Mr. Putin has repeatedly portrayed Russia as a victim of a Western campaign to erase Russian culture and cancel great composers like Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Russian works continue to be played throughout the United States and Europe.Mr. Gergiev, once one of the world’s busiest international conductors, has hunkered down in St. Petersburg, leading a packed schedule of performances at the Mariinsky, including classics like Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” and Glinka’s “A Life for the Tsar.” Mr. Gergiev is the general and artistic director of the Mariinsky, which has been his base for decades, and which has expanded with funding and support from Mr. Putin.“I don’t find that my life has taken a turn for the worse,” he said in a recent interview with a Russian news outlet. “I find myself ready to be at home as much as possible.”Mr. Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theater did not respond to requests for comment from The New York Times.The Bolshoi, in a statement to The Times, said that overseas tours were necessary to maintain its image and reputation.“The fact that the Western world has been forced to deprive itself of the opportunity to see classical ballet the way Bolshoi is dancing saddens us,” the statement said. “But we ourselves continue to work actively and tour in those places where they are waiting for us.”Since the start of the war, performing has also become increasingly difficult for artists and institutions inside Russia because of a broad crackdown on free speech and expression by Mr. Putin. A “cultural front” movement has spread in recent months with the aim of mobilizing artists in support of the war.Several artists who have publicly expressed opposition to the war have been fired or forced to leave the country. The Bolshoi Ballet scrubbed the name of the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, once a close collaborator and a former artistic director, from its roster after he criticized the war and left Moscow shortly before he was to premiere a new work; the company recently called in replacements to help finish one of his dances.Russia is now looking to its allies to help prop up its flagship cultural institutions, just as it has turned to China and other countries to make up for lost business since its economy was abruptly severed from the West’s.Mr. Gergiev’s appearance in Beijing, which included four sold-out concerts, drew wide attention.The state-run news media hailed the visit as the “grand return” of the “toothpick conductor” (Mr. Gergiev has been known to conduct with a toothpick instead of a baton). Commentators seized the occasion to rail against the West for “politicizing art and venting their sentiment toward innocent people from Russia.”In Beijing, Mr. Gergiev said he felt he was “coming home.” He toured the Forbidden City, where he said he was reminded of China’s enduring cultural traditions, and visited old friends.At the news conference, Mr. Gergiev said the recent meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi would open the door to more frequent cultural exchange between Russia and China. He spoke about a patriotic Chinese composer who is a favorite of Mr. Xi — Xian Xinghai, who was stranded in the Soviet Union during World War II and died in Moscow. Mr. Gergiev said he hoped one day to lead an orchestra of young Russian and Chinese musicians.“These concerts,” he said of his appearance in Beijing, “mark the restart of international cultural exchange.”Milana Mazaeva contributed research from Washington, D.C., and Li You from Shanghai. More