AFAD’s Statement on Anna Netrebko’s Performance at the Slovak National Theatre

Ukrainian students study at AFAD, and the academy is actively building partnerships with art academies in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, and Uzhhorod. Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine is an expression of its imperial ambitions to dominate territories that were previously affected by Sovietization. Russia is unequivocally the aggressor in the war against Ukraine, and President Putin has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Today, on April 30th, opera singer Anna Netrebko is performing on the stage of the Slovak National Theatre (SND). Netrebko has consistently supported Putin and his regime and has never publicly distanced herself from this support. She simultaneously embodies Russia’s current cultural and value system—one tied to autocracy, oligarchy, corruption, human rights violations, physical liquidation of dissidents, torture, and rape in prisons.

Netrebko’s performance at the SND serves as pure propaganda of Russian interests in Slovakia. Claims that art and culture should be apolitical are meaningless when they fail to take into account the context in which a given event takes place. Moreover, the SND director, Zuzana Ťapáková, has implemented a regime in which she used a hired private security service to restrict free access to the theatre building for the public and staff. At the same time, the protest gathering against Netrebko’s performance was moved from the public space in front of the theatre to the back part of the square. The aim of Ťapáková’s decision was to create a comfortable environment for the arrival of politicians and select guests.

It is a striking paradox that at the very same time, a performance of Tatarka is taking place in the SND Drama Studio—while Dominik Tatarka devoted his life and work to the criticism of totalitarian regimes.

The way Ťapáková manages the theatre takes us back to the era of normalization, a time when propaganda, elitism, and servility toward Russia constituted the official political line.