(Credit: tim osipov)

Anna Netrebko’s manager Miguel Esteban is firing back at the Ukrainian Minister of Culture after he called the soprano “Part of the Putin System.”

In a piece for Die Welt, Esteban said, “‘Vladimir Putin and Operation Netrebko.’ It was written by Oleksandr Tkachenko, Ukraine’s Minister of Culture. Apart from the fact that, although the headline suggests otherwise, the text only deals with the opera singer Anna Netrebko in two places.”

He added that the Minister was “malicious and slanderous” and said that the Minister explained, “why another Russian artist, the singer Philip Kirkorov, appears to have been boycotted, he provides no evidence for his claim about Anna Netrebko, nor does he justify his call to cancel her two scheduled performances at the International May Festival in Wiesbaden.”

The Manager also said that “Netrebko is not ‘part of the Putin system’ and never has been.”

Esteban referred to the soprano’s March 30 statement in which she condemned the war and said her relationship with Putin was basically during a few national awards and a handful of post-performance meetings. He also referred to her two newspaper interviews which she did earlier in 2022.

Esteban concluded his argument by stating that “the Ukrainian government has not presented any comprehensible legal reason why Anna Netrebko’s name appears alongside 118 others in its sanctions” and added that “it seems reasonable to assume that this and other actions are only intended to exploit Anna Netrebko’s notoriety in order to gain media attention for their own cause.”