Hello. Apologies for my absence; I’ve been busy seeing Swan Lake three times and catching up, generally, on life admin.
Last week, I had the pleasure (and privilege) of watching three ABT pairings perform the storied ballet: Hee Seo and Cory Stearns, Chloe Misseldine and Aran Bell, and Gillian Murphy and James Whiteside. All were incredible and brought to their roles refined technique and artistry imbued with their own personal ethos. Seo’s swan is innately regal and self-assured in her swan-ness, while the impossibly long Chloe brings a great contrast to Odette and Odile, offering more calculated uncertainty in her white swan to high emotional payoff; Murphy, in her final performance, was astonishingly at the peak of technical perfection and artistic consideration. She was a master at work, comfortable in the hardest physical feats of the ballet (her black swan fouettés rightfully elicited a mid-show standing ovation), and deeply considerate of the nuances of the choreography. In her final moment of Act II, as Von Rothbart beckons Odette away from Siegfried through his magical force, Murphy stands center stage alone, mystifyingly pulled in two directions through her own stretch of her arms and dip of her torso. I have never seen this moment of pain and yearning so fully realized in a dancer.
The previous week, I saw the delightful Sylvia (thank you to ABT’s Skylar Brandt, who very kindly provided a ticket and stunned in the physically demanding, delightful ballet). Her partner, Jake Roxander—who will continue to be her partner for all of her fall-season shows—once again demonstrated he is more than ready for a principal position. I’ll continue to beat this drum until he gets the promotion. In the meantime, ABT promoted three corps members to soloist: Sierra Armstrong, Takumi Miyake, and Jose Sebastian. (Miyake, in one performance of Swan Lake, pulled off what appeared to be an octuple pirouette in the Neapolitan duet with Roxander).
The day before, I saw Dance Theater of Harlem’s Ingrid Silva perform her own work at Carvalho; you can read about it in my piece for Fjord Review.
I am still reading Middlemarch. I recently finished Daddy's Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer.
As penance for my absence, this letter is entirely free. I am toying around with the best way to structure paid subs and may move to a model that places letters (partially) under a temporary paywall; I want to make sure the curation and analysis I share here is accessible to as many people as possible, and these sends do take a significant amount of time to pull together. Your support ($30 annually or $5 monthly) enables me to prioritize this work while balancing a demanding full-time job and other responsibilities!
In any case, I appreciate your readership. Let’s get on with it:
The Western ban on pro-Kremlin artists seemed to be waning, but the work of activists may be changing that. Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a Putin ally, had been slated for his first concert in Western Europe since the start of the war, at Italy’s Un'Estate da RE festival in Campania, but that appearance is now canceled, the New York Times reported yesterday morning. Italian politician Vincenzo de Luca, who is the president of the Campania region in the south of the country, previously defended the decision to platform Gergiev, saying in a livestream “Culture… must not be influenced by politics and political logic,” the BBC reported. Because the festival is funded by the EU, many thought Gergiev’s involvement may be seen as an endorsement of the Kremlin’s actions; Italian culture minister Alessandro Giuli and Yulia Navalnaja, the widow of Alexei Navalny, condemned the inclusion of Gergiev in the festival.
Still, some figures with ties to Putin are returning to Western society. The soprano Anna Netrebko, who has historically supported the Russian president, has, over the past year or so, made her way back onto global opera stages, the New York Times previously reported; in September, she’ll open the Royal Opera’s season in London (though Met Opera general manager Peter Gelb, who gave her the boot for her history of supporting Putin, remains starkly opposed, saying that the eventual statement she did make about the war was not a genuine one). Gelb was also one of the people who spoke out of the programming of Gergiev, telling Der Standard that the Met Opera continues to put on Russian operas but will not stand for Putin allies: “We want to cancel Putin, not Pushkin!”
We’ve spoken before of how ballet companies in Ukraine and elsewhere are eschewing classic Russian productions amid the war, and this practice remains contentious for some. Odesa Philharmonic conductor Hobart Earle, for his part, has favored patriotic, Ukrainian programming since the start of the war (concerts continue—though less frequently and with more precautions—despite the missiles) but has pushed against Kyiv’s decree that Odesa “decolonize,” by fully removing associations with Russian-language cultural figures (a movement that would, for example, rename the city’s streets and remove a statue of, yes, Pushkin). The diversity of Odesa (where the majority of the population is Russian-speaking) is something Earle thinks should be celebrated, he told the Financial Times.
Still, art and culture can—and are—used for political aims. Putin’s government has silenced artists for not supporting the regime: “Before the war, artists of all kinds made compromises as a way of securing fame, riches, success. Now you make compromises simply in order to do your work at all,” a cultural critic in Moscow told New Yorker contributing writer Joshua Yaffa. The Kremlin has increasingly cracked down on private museums, too, The Art Newspaper recently reported. It’s no wonder cultural figures like ballerina Olga Smirnova have left the country.
These kinds of stories are ever-developing. But expect to see more discussion of Russian vs. Ukrainian identity when it comes to art and cultural exchange and representation. See, for instances, The Stolen Art Campaign: a digital campaign led by Ukrainian NGO The Shadows Project that aims to get museums to correct labels that misattribute Ukrainian artists as Russian; several major institutions are reportedly reviewing their attributions as a result, according the the Ukraine government-run news site United24.
Pianists are having a generally good time, thanks to streaming and social media—two forces that are driving the fame of players like 2022 Van Cliburn winner Yunchan Lim. Clive Gillinson, executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall, recently told the Financial Times that we are in a “golden age” for pianists, and that there are about “10 or 20” of these particular musicians who could easily sell out the famed music hall, “which was unheard of 20 years ago.”
This class of superstar pianists includes the oft-mentioned Yuja Wang, 31-year-old Seong-Jin Cho, the streaming giant Víkingur Ólafsson, the Satie-playing Igor Levit, Alice Sara Ott (who has used her platform to share a fuller picture of her life with multiple sclerosis), and Alexandre Kantorow, the pianist who played Ravel’s Jeux d’eau (Fountains) in the pouring rain during last year’s Olympics (the Steinway was rainproofed, though his contract prohibited from him from recently telling The Times how). Ólafsson, the eldest of this cohort, is 41). I look forward to seeing their artistry develop even further over time.
The conductor Oliver Zeffman is doing his part to boost classical music audiences, while celebrating diversity and inclusion, through Classical Pride—an annual concert series he launched in 2023 to celebrate the contributions of members of the LGBTQ+ community to the classical genre. This year, Zeffman conducted six shows in the series, largely across London, with one show at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This effort, he told Esquire UK, shows promise for growing and expanding classical audiences at concert halls.
Classical music doesn’t always have the best track record for audience development. There’s this attitude—and I’m perhaps exaggerating but only a little—of “We play great art and so if audiences don’t come, that’s their loss.” And whether that’s true or not, that’s of course not how you get in a new audience. If you have no context for classical music and no connection to it - you haven’t played an instrument or sung in a choir, it’s not something your parents or friends are into, what’s the incentive to come? So if you can find a hook to get an audience into the concert hall—that’s the thing. Classical Pride is of course about celebrating the enormous contribution the LGBTQ+ community has made—and continues to make—to classical music, but, in doing so, it’s a way of bringing new, larger, younger, more diverse audiences into the concert hall.
The sopranos are taking over—and I’m not talking about their starring roles. Several storied performers have taken on new leadership positions within the opera world. Mexican-American soprano Cecilia “Ceci” Violetta López was named, in May, general director and CEO of Opera Las Vegas, and Patricia Racette, that same month, was named the next artistic director of Opera Theater of St. Louis, where she had directed shows and overseen its young artist program for several years. Now, Renée Fleming—who made headlines for departing from her role at the Kennedy Center earlier this year—has finally put on her production of Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte, at the Wheeler Opera House as part of the Aspen Music Festival and School, the New York Times reported.
She originally planned to put on her interpretation of the show—which is about two men who disguise themselves to try to trick their girlfriends and prove they are unfaithful—with the Washington National Opera in 2021, but that production was canceled due to Covid. What makes Fleming’s interpretation unique? It stages the show at a gym in Cape Cod and ends (thanks the the openness of the libretto to interpretive staging) with the women leaving their foolhardy boyfriends.
Let’s also keep an eye on what Haitian-American composer Nathalie Joachim is working on. The Brooklyn-born flutist and vocalist was just named Opera Philadelphia's Composer in Residence for its 2025-2026 season.
The Kennedy Center is losing subscriptions as a result of the Trump takeover we’ve been discussing since the beginning of the year, the Washington Post critic Michael Andor Brodeur notes, which could spell trouble for the National Symphony Orchestra, which largely performs in that space; subscription sales have dropped 28 percent for the NSO specifically, as the Center’s subscription sales as a whole are down 36 percent year-over-year, the NYT previously reported.
Andor Brodeur points out that musicians (including renowned German violinist Christian Tetzlaff), have made statements on avoiding the U.S. for political reasons, but this could have consequences that ripple far past political statement. The Austraian conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst, told the German publication BackStage Classical in March: “Boycotts of American cultural institutions would likely lead to the USA becoming an intellectual desert. And this would support a policy that accepts precisely that: the insignificance of culture.”
Museums and other art institutions in the United States are still figuring out how to move forward in light of significant cuts to federal funding; this will be a developing story for quite some time. The Yale Art Gallery, for one, has withdrawn two federal grant applications for an exhibit of African art, as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities now stipulate that applications must not “operate any programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws,” (a stipulation that has been very loosely interpreted, as evidenced by crackdowns on exhibits that even mention issues related to race), Connecticut Insider reported.
With $200,000 now to fill in its budget, the museum said it will tap its endowment (which is an undisclosed portion of Yale University’s $46 billion endowment) to put on the show, which will focus on the Nguni people of southern Africa and is scheduled to open in the fall of 2026. The NEA previously this year canceled a $30,000 grant for the gallery’s planned September exhibit, which focuses on Indonesian textiles; that exhibit, thanks to a fundraising effort and support from the Robert Lehman Endowment Fund, will continue as planned.
Across the pond, the Tate—the art institution which includes the Tate Modern and Tate Britain—has been accused of being too “woke.” Director Maria Balshaw rejects that word, calling it a “weaponized euphemism” that has been used to criticize decisions like the Tate Britain’s contentious 2023 rehang, which adds social and historical context to its labeling and curation, among other moves. Balshaw is unwavering—and recently spoke to the Financial Times about the Tate Modern’s plans for several women-artist focused shows; the first, on the Aboriginal artist Emily Kam Kngwarray (1910-1996), opened earlier in July and is the first major European show dedicated to the artist. Next year, the museum will show an exhibit that focuses on the work of contemporary English artist Tracey Emin and another on Frida Kahlo.
The Tate, as we’ve previously discussed, is partaking in the historically American tradition of endowment-building, which Balshaw says will help protect the institution in the future (even if she doesn’t believe that successful fundraising will have a negative impact on the museum’s public funding).
Institutions in France are also considering a new means of funding. In a visit the the U.K. earlier this month, French culture secretary Rachida Dati officially signed a agreement with U.K. culture minister, Chris Bryant, to create a French National Trust (National Trust à la française), inspired by—and in partnership with—the U.K.’s National Trust, the National Trust for Scotland, and English Heritage. “There are more than 100 national trusts around the world, an important network of like-minded organizations working hard for the protection of cultural and natural heritage. Whether sharing expertise on approaches to conservation or exploring connected histories, we have much to learn from our friends in France and across the globe,” John Orna-Ornstein, director of access and conservation at the National Trust, told The Art Newspaper.
Positive fundraising progress aside, many institutions around the world are still struggling. The National Trust itself saw significant job cuts earlier this month due to budget constrictions. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco also announced layoffs last week that impact 12 positions—or five percent of its staff—as a part of “cost-saving measures,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The workers union at the Milwaukee Art Museum signaled last week that as many as eight staff positions are currently in threat of elimination, WTMJ News reported. Even institutions like the Tate have not been immune to making cuts driven by a need to offset pandemic losses, the Museums Association reported in March.
Still, there are positive things going on in the museum world. New York City’s American Museum of Natural History just announced free admission for food stamp recipients who live in the state. Cleveland artist and historian Robert Louis Brandon Edwards is turning a 1947 Greyhound bus into a traveling Museum of the Great Migration that he hops to make operational by next year, he told ArtNews. The West Bank’s Palestinian Museum has continued its operations amid the war in Gaza by expanding into digital exhibits, working on international partnerships (including an exhibit on Palestinian embroidery currently open at the V&A Dundee), and putting on works by Gazan artists, while assisting in the recovery of heritage objects from the region, The Art Newspaper reported.
The art market itself continues to be slow, with auction sales in the first half of the year down year-over-year, according to data from ArtNet. Still, art is exchanging hands in different ways; private, invite-only auctions are on the rise among the über-rich, according to the Financial Times. And Zero Art Fair’s first edition in New York City earlier this month also facilitated the exchange of more than $500,000 worth of work, with buyers paying nothing. The catch? Artists retain the rights to their work, including the right to sell it. (Many artists participate to ease storage costs of their work.) After a five-year vesting period, the collector may sell the work, with the artist getting 50 percent of the first-sale price and 10 percent resale royalties in perpetuity. The fair’s organizers put out a call for collectors and 220 were randomly selected, the majority of whom said they could “sometimes” afford to buy art, The Art Newspaper reported. ▲