On Saturday, Nov. 22, the Metropolitan Opera put on its, in my view, unfortunate production of “Carmen.” While Carmen gets into a fight with one of the other factory girls, chaos erupts as the security guards try to regain control.

At this moment in the production, a white man dressed in black came onto the stage and started dancing. He didn’t belong, and it wasn’t long before, per a social media video making the rounds, performers on stage started backing away, and supers and security guards came onto the scene to remove him. Moments later, another white guy ran onto the stage to do the same. Security guards removed him, too.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by @opera.lvr

The Met has since issued a statement noting that a guard had left his post and thus facilitated the access to the stage. This person has since been rightfully suspended until further investigation proves what exactly happened him.

One of the protestors in question, Davidson Boswell posted a video on social media in which he explained his version of the events. He noted that the current production of “Carmen” sets the opera in modern times, depicting Carmen as an immigrant and showing Don José and the other soldiers as ICE. He notes that while the production is critical of ICE in its depiction, it is also financed by the Koch brothers, who he further adds are also financiers for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and by extension the Trump administration’s propagation of ICE raids and agents.

“It’s deeply hypocritical of them to do this, because the Lincoln Center is financed to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by oil companies and more specifically, the Koch brothers,” he explains. “The reason America sucks so bad and we have the Gestapo in our streets is because of the Koch brothers.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Davidson Boswell (@davidsonboswell)

He goes on to state that this is “liberalism in a nutshell,” noting that people like the Koch brothers are financing an opera that is critical of fascist policies while then turning around and financing those very actions themselves.

In theory, I agree with him. There’s a lot of hypocrisy in the arts. The David H. Koch Center is the home of the New York City Ballet. There are some real issues with the Met Opera’s recent alliance with Saudi Arabia.  But the unfortunate reality is that this is how the arts in the United States of America are financed unless the government decides to expand the National Endowment for the Arts and similar programs to support the arts nationwide instead of destroying them. Under President Trump, you’d better expect more Kennedy Center takeovers and cultural propaganda machines before you get any federal support for independent arts. But that’s another problem altogether.

What I take issue with is the actions Boswell and “a few of his buddies” took to get their message across.

I was in attendance a few seasons back when environmental protestors shutdown a performance of “Tannhäuser.” It was strange, uncomfortable, and disruptive. But I never felt in danger because the protestors never left their posts. They shouted, showcased their banners, and did their protest. And we all noticed. I still remember.

I was also there the day that “The Death of a Klinghoffer” premiered at the Met. For that latter performance, everyone knew stuff could happen, and the Met was prepared. Protests erupted. People screamed obscenities. Tempers flared. No one ever felt in danger. But the message was clear, and the opera lost its HD performance and has never returned to the Met.

But what happened on Saturday was not that. It was trespassing. It was dangerous.

In speaking to performers and other people that work at the Met, the general vibe was that some people were alarmed by the trespassers. One of Boswell’s cohorts came on stage without stating his intent or purpose. Based on the video, his dancing suggests that he thought he might win some laughs from the audience, that he could be a charismatic leader. But no one knows his intention. If he got on stage in the first place, who is to say he didn’t sneak a weapon into the theater. For a protestor fighting against the powers of fascism, he clearly doesn’t know how to read a room.

Gun violence is rampant in this country. Fear is at its highest because of the ICE raids. Charlie Kirk, an ultra-right podcaster, was assassinated a few months ago. Violence is at a premium in today’s United States of America, especially from white men, and Boswell and his partner should have known better. If this is real, why not build a movement around it and have people march to Lincoln Center and protest it, as others did ahead of the season opener in 2013-14?

And speaking of the room… we’re in New York City, one of the most liberal cities in the world. Did he think he was speaking to the Republican National Convention or CPAC? Most of the people in that audience probably side with his views. Going back to that night of the “Tannhäuser” protest, I remember people around me agreeing with the general sentiment of the protestors and laughing about them not reading the room. It’s a common misconception that people who go to the opera are stuffy and conservative elites. In New York City, that couldn’t be further from the truth. So ultimately, this entire action came off as dangerously performative. In fact, the last thing the opera needs is a “white savior.” While we’re on that topic, what would have happened if a person of color had attempted this stunt? Would they have gotten the chance to go back to the streets of New York to post a video explaining their reasons for storming a stage the way Boswell did?

Speaking of performative, let’s talk about Boswell’s use of misinformation. Carrie Cracknell’s production of Bizet’s masterpiece is awful. I wrote an entire review about why I feel this way. Another one of OperaWire’s reviewers shared similar sentiments. Other critics also railed on it during its premiere. The general consensus – it’s not good. But the directing team has never gone public, making the one-to-one correlation between ICE and the guards in this version of “Carmen.” They’ve always been clear that it’s border patrol. Of course, given the current circumstances, we can interpret this as ICE, but that’s an interpretation, not a fact. So Boswell’s actions are ultimately based on the kind of loose and easily refutable interpretation that gives cannon fodder to the conservatives and the Trump administration, claiming that liberal protestors are radicals and insurrectionists.

So ultimately, what did Boswell achieve? He and his colleague brought attention to the Koch brothers and their inherent hypocrisy. Fair, was it worth making other people, especially the performers whose space you invaded, feel unsafe? The Met will likely tighten its security, and eventually this will pass, but for some performers, the fear will remain. What if this happens again? And what if, after seeing Boswell’s achievement, someone is emboldened to do something worse? At that point, who cares if there were good intentions? Why create a scenario where that hypothetical can now exist? Does that not make him similarly hypocritical to the Koch brothers?