Do we like Anna Netrebko?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Her own words and acts around Putin and the Donetsk donation are a real stain, set against a clean record on how she treats people.
Netrebko is one of the big names of modern opera, a Russian soprano who was a star of the Met until 2022. Putin honoured her with the title People's Artist of Russia back in 2008, and that closeness to the Kremlin is the thread that runs through everything she's asked about now.
The Putin story goes back years. A 2025 profile reports that she allowed her name on his 2012 campaign list, told Russian state media in 2017 it was “impossible to think of a better president for Russia”, and spent her 50th birthday at the Kremlin palace. In her own words to Le Monde she said she endorsed him in 2012 because he'd done a lot for the arts, but didn't vote for him in 2018.
Then there's Donetsk. In December 2014 she handed a donation to a separatist leader for the city's opera house and was photographed with a Novorossiya flag. She told Le Monde “There was nothing political in this gesture” and that her only mistake was not informing herself better about the Donbass. Plenty of Ukrainians read the photo very differently.
When Russia invaded in 2022 she said “I expressly condemn the war on Ukraine”, and also that she wasn't allied with any Russian leader. The Met wanted more, and she says she refused to publicly denounce Putin because she held a Russian passport. The Met dropped her, and an arbitrator later ordered it to pay her more than US$200,000 for 13 cancelled shows.
On the harm test, I found nothing from her on LGBTQ+ people, women's rights, vaccines or the climate, and that's the honest limit of the record. What is on the record is her own endorsement of Putin, a photo with a separatist flag, and a 2022 statement critics found too soft. Critics also point to her photo with conductor Valery Gergiev from early in the war.
The fight is still live. Her Met lawsuit was narrowed in 2024 and revived in part in 2025, and one report says that in September 2026 a judge dismissed her defamation claim for lack of proof of actual malice. Munich says she's back, with its boss declaring he's “clearly sided with Ukraine”, while London's Royal Opera booking drew open letters and pickets.