MANHATTAN (CN) — A federal judge is allowing Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko to move ahead with her gender discrimination complaint against the Metropolitan Opera, which Netrebko claims unjustly fired her for refusing to denounce Vladimir Putin.
Netrebko, a world-renowned opera singer who has sung in nearly 200 performances at the Met, sued the historic opera house in 2023 claiming defamation, breach of contract and discrimination after its general manager Peter Gelb asked her to make a statement distancing herself from Putin after his invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Netrebko responded that, as a Russian citizen, she could not make such a statement,” a court filing said.
When Netrebko refused, her performances at the Met were pulled amid the opera house’s ongoing campaign in support of Ukraine. She claims that the Met refused to pay her the hundreds of thousands of dollars she was contractually owed, and that Gelb defamed her by calling her a Putin “fan club member” to peers.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres issued a mixed decision that granted the Met’s motion to dismiss Netrebko’s breach of contract and defamation claims. Torres found the Met’s decision not to pay Netrebko for the axed shows didn’t violate her union’s collective bargaining agreement as she had claimed.
As for the defamation claim, Torres found that Netrebko couldn’t prove that Gelb made knowingly false statements about her allegiance to Putin.
While Netrebko did condemn the war itself in a 2022 Instagram statement, she simultaneously chastised the Met’s for forcing “artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland.” She also called “those from the West” who criticized Putin “despicable,” “human shits” and “evil as blind aggression” in another now-deleted post, according to Torres’ ruling.
But Torres allowed Netrebko to press on with her claim of gender discrimination, referencing Netrebko’s examples of male Putin-connected opera singers whom the Met treated more favorably.
“For example, she alleges that the male opera singer Ildar Abdrazakov performed at political events, ‘including at least one event at which Putin … spoke about the war in Ukraine,’ and that Abdrazakov organized a Kremlin-backed music festival,” Torres wrote in her 23-page ruling filed in the Southern District of New York. “She further states that male opera singer Evgeny Nikitin was featured at a Victory Day event involving Putin, and that Igor Golovatenko and Alexey Markov have performed at state-sponsored venues since the invasion of Ukraine.”
In her complaint, Netrebko claims she was specifically targeted as a woman because the Met wanted to make “an example out of its ‘reigning prima donna’” to most visibly show its commitment to Ukraine. Meanwhile, she argues that the Met maintained its relationship with those male counterparts.
“Here, Netrebko’s claim of gender discrimination crosses the line from merely possible to plausible,” Torres wrote.
Netrebko also claims the Met discriminated against her because of her nationality. But Torres dismissed that claim, too, finding her arguments “unavailing.”
In a statement to Courthouse News, a representative for the Met said they were encouraged by Torres’ decision to drop three-fourths of Netrebko's complaint.
“We’re pleased to see that three of the four claims were completely dismissed and strongly believe that the fourth claim will also prove to be without merit should it go to trial,” the rep said Friday.
Attorneys for Netrebko didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Netrebko’s ties to Putin go back over a decade. According to a 2022 article from The New York Times, cited in Torres’ ruling, the singer purportedly supported Putin’s 2012 election. Over the years, she’s showered him with praise and compliments, calling him once “a very attractive man” and lauding his “strong, male energy.” She told a Russian news agency in 2017 that it was “impossible to think of a better president for Russia.”
Putin has returned the favor, bestowing her with awards and opportunities like a gig to perform at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Netrebko’s ties to the Kremlin remain controversial. This week, the Austria-based advocacy group Point for Ukraine called for the boycott of Netrebko’s Friday concert in Linz.
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