Murder ink
Evgeny Nikitin has withdrawn from the Bayreuth Festival’s new production of Der Fliegende Holländer after a German television program revealed the bass-baritone has a swastika tattoo. His departure leaves the company with only three days to find a replacement for the production, which opens the festival on Wednesday. [via AFP]
According to the Bayreuth website Samuel Youn will sing the Hollaender (in addition to the Heerrufer). Sorry about my misleading post from yesterday.
Responsibility and what’s right/wrong are relative, aren’t they? Or at least, they are culturally conditioned.
Here is what a commenter on a French opera blog believes: The perverted spirit is not on Nikitin’s skin, but in the public opinion manipulators who are using him. Nikitin is a victim of the frenzy of the self-righteous and the power of the hypocrites. They have made reappear on the Russian’s skin a forbidden juvenile tattoo which no longer exists; they are passing the buck of their own guilt feelings to the other, the Foreigner. This scape-goating makes them (the Bavarians, I gather) feel good about themselves.
“Here is what a commenter on a French opera blog believes….”
THEN AGAIN…
Are the French the “purist” judges of what’s “right or wrong” in this matter??
Anyone remember the dark years of 1940-44?…Remember “Le Marechel”Petain..and his weasely lap-dog, Laval?…and the thousands of French men and women who had no moral problems with collaborating with the Germans?
(yea…there WERE MILLIONS of French people who suffered horribly under the Occupiers—BUT….)
I see, so because of things some French people did 70 years ago, that means NO French person EVER can have a valid comment on anything that has a connenction to WWII. How nice that we have you to be the absolute arbiter on these matters and tell us what to think.
You misread me, Arianna:
I never claimed to be the “absolute arbiter”
( whatever that means…??) BUT--just bringing up a FACT-- regardless of whether or not it happened 70-1,000 years ago—or just yesterday--
AND-- anyone ( the poster on the French blog) who can be so facile and dismissive of the troubled history of the not so distant past, has little-if NO respect, as far as I am concerned….
AND-- it was more than just “a few French people” who committed fairly heinous acts during the Occupation, BTW-- read “Marianne in
Chains”, or any of the books by Robert Paxton, concerning the years of the Occupation, for a damning expose of those years --( “The Sorrow and the Pity”, anyone?)
Brooklyn,
This poster was not around during the Occupation, and neither you nor I know who his parents were (nor does it matter, really). So you need a more appropriate and substantial argument against his viewpoint.
The argument against the poster’s viewpoint is that it is a ridiculously over-complicated piece of projection.
People don’t like swastikas because people don’t like Nazis. The end.
Just because something is complicated doesn’t make it null.
Obviously. And just because something is complicated, it doesn’t stop it being stupid, either.
Armer dixit?
*shrug* You asked for another argument against his viewpoint. Mine is that it’s dumb. No need to get snotty.
Oedipe:
Your right--I don’t “know” what the blog-poster’s personal family history is--for all I know , his/her relatives were deported from France in 1942.
However, reading between the lines ( and I’m sure I am not the only “guilty party” in doing so, on this site, regarding any number of things, no?), I just got a very uneasy gut feeling in reading a French person’s ( actually we don’t even know if this person is French, so it might be a moot point), reaction.
I grant you that this is a very “hot-button ” issue fer me--and it is one of the few matters where, as far as I believe, that there is no area of “gray”--it is purely “black or white”--which might not be a rational response, on my part,,,,
Brooklyn,
I hear you loud and clear about that gut feeling. But I think it’s a mistake to get angry and/or dismissive about the guy’s arguments. IMO, such arguments should be taken seriously and analyzed carefully, because they are subtly shrewd and could appeal to many people (including some here).
One comes across such arguments and sophisms quite often today, especially (though not only) in Europe when discussing historic responsibilities. Simplifying things, I would say the new “trend” is to state/prove that everybody is -and has been all along- a victim. If we are all victims, then singling out the victims of the Holocaust is manipulative and an over-reaction.
Thus, Nikitin is a victim…
Oedipe:
You hit the nail on the head, fer me….
The “we are all victims” line, in regards to the horrors of WWII, is one that I find particulary odious--NO— not EVERYONE WAS a “victim”--and there were quite a few perpetrators/by-standers/supporters/ , even tin the invaded Countries that the Germans occupied.
That was my only real strong response to the blog-post….
Has Reichsmaestro Thielemann exhibited HIS tattoos yet?
The Reichmaestro is said to be an admirer of Frederick the Great, a defense-cutting, French-speaking, music-writing, government government health care -providing, relidgiously-tolerant and (it is claimed, with some good reason) gay correspondent of Voltaire.
Can you find the relevant word in this music?
You would think that any singer worthy to sing Vanderdekken in Bayreuth would know how to pronounce Mädchen ! (as in “Wie aus der Ferne längst vergang’ner Zeiten Spricht dieses Mädchens Bild zu mir”). No, I don’t cut him any slack because he’s Russian. If anything, on German TV he should have been eager to demonstrate a knowledge of the subtilties of singing in German.
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/1689056/Heavy-Metal-in-
Bayreuth#/beitrag/video/1689056/Heavy-Metal-in-Bayreuth
I don’t know anything about Nikitin, his singing or his politics, except that I do find him physically repulsive. Yucky face. And it’s not that I don’t like hot, bald, tattooed, hairy numbers either.
Well, Clitissima,
(as usual, late to the party but…) Nikitin is not my cup of tea either, physically (he looks nothing like the Captain!), but the one time I saw him, he played Rangoni as a very sexy, sexy, treacherous, manipulative, villainous monk. You could see how he could have Marina eating out of his hand. And he also saved the day that evening, mid-performance, singing Godunov in BG’s last (death) scene, when Pape withdrew due to illness.
I don’t understand what the HUGE fuss this is. The tattoo has been covered up, it’s not like you can see it anymore. So he was a heavy metal head as a youth… Can we move on?
I don’t understand what the HUGE fuss this is. The tattoo has been covered up, it’s not like you can see it anymore. So he was a heavy metal head as a youth… Can we move on?
http://www.ns-kunst.com/mobel-holz-geschnitzt/third-reich-oak-bread-plate-with-lebensrune-life-rune-motif-1523/
http://www.lebensspuren-deutschland.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/lebensbornabzeichen.jpg
http://www.ida-nrw.de/rechtsextremismus/cms/upload/img_web/embleme/R9.jpg
http://www.ida-nrw.de/rechtsextremismus/cms/upload/img_web/embleme/R6.gif
http://news.webshots.com/photo/1511700727054010923MdxJSc
http://www.german-helmets.com/Waffen-SS%20period%20photos%203.htm
http://news.webshots.com/photo/1541070803054010923goeKsv
http://www.warrelics.eu/forum/history-research-3-reich-ww2/ss-grave-regulation-manual-5847/
You can lead a horse to water….
I don’t want to post any links to actual extreme-right groups, but the first picture on this search result will do:
http://alturl.com/p8xto
He has already sung Wagner at the Met with Levine conducting (Fasolt). I think if he is anti-Semitic and racist we would have heard about it by now and Nikitin would have been unemployable.
Still, as I replied upthread, given his country’s suffering during WWII the tattoo was an ignorant thing to do, even given he was a young man at the time. Kind of like a Native American getting a tattoo of Custer.
And I meant that as a reply to BAB, in her earlier post.
I really don’t get what a HUGE fuss this Jerry Sandusky business is. It was in the showers, for Heaven’s sake; it’s not like he was doing anything out in the open. And they were GHETTO kids (wink wink). Payoffs were made, I suppose; it was all kept quiet. Besides, it was TWO YEARS AGO. A lot of us did things two years ago we wouldn’t do now. Can’t we just move on, and not think about it any more?
If only this were satire. There’s a gross symmetry between the arguments made by those who are protesting the removal of Joe Paterno’s statue and those accusing Bayreuth of bowing to some kind of nefarious PC pressure.
For the record, if Nitkin genuinely believes that the offending tattoos (there are more than one!) are genuinely offensive then he really needs to expansively speak about his youth, his motivation for getting the tattoo branded on his flesh (rather than merely shaving his head) and how/why he underwent a conversion from his Aryan supremacist past. If the physicality of removing the tattoos proved too excruciating for him to bear, he should have to provide excruciating detail into his internal changes. That is, if he actually cares what the public thinks.
Or at least if he cares about what the segment of the public who finds this offensive thinks. What’s worrying about those who are rationalizing, diminishing and justifying Nitkins ink is it places less pressure on him (or any public figure) to explain themselves when they are aligned with movements/causes that are engaging in violence. And, for the millionth time, this isn’t ONLY about the holocaust, but also the fact that neo nazi groups continue to operate and continue to commit acts of violence. These things are not “a long time ago” they are happening now. Ignorance of the reality of neo-nazi organizing in the present doesn’t excuse some of the comments on this board.
expansively speak about his youth, his motivation for getting the tattoo branded on his flesh (rather than merely shaving his head) and how/why he underwent a conversion from his Aryan supremacist past.
Just to put some dates on these things, the video of Nikitin on drummer is from 2007, i.e. about five years ago. Nikitin has been baring his swastika tattoo -- on Russian national television, no less -- at least until 5 years ago, age 33 or 34. That would also mean that the arrow-shaped Pfeilrune on the center of his chest is an even more recent addition.
This “I was a callow youth” business needs much more amplification.
(For the date of the Russian television program, see http://www.tagesschau.de/kultur/hollaender102.html)
The comments to that Tageschau new video are here:
http://meta.tagesschau.de/id/63291/bayreuth-opernsaenger-sagt-premiere-wegen-nazi-tattoo-ab The reporter claims that the Wagner sisters found the whole business with Nitkin’s ink “dishonest”. I wonder if they will pay his contract in full.
I think Nikitin has a problem with his credibility.
His letter to Bild am Sonntag (not on the website, so far as I can tell, but referred to in many recent articles such as http://alturl.com/isfp3) said he got all of the tattoos done between 1989 and 1991. But as we have seen, the Pfeilrune on the center of his chest must have been done sometime after 2007.
He also claimed that he had no idea c. 1990 that the swastika was associated with Nazism or neo-Nazi groups. Credible?
The Wagner sisters are widely disliked in many quarters, but I can’t imagine any opera manager would be foolish enough to stick Nikitin in front of a microphone right now to answer questions from the press about his tattoos. At this moment, he seems unable to discuss them forthrightly and honestly.
I love you, BABS. Some folks have moral tin ears. What would Miss Manners think? (paraphrase “The general rule is to let bygones be bygones. One noteworthy exception is the intentional use of symbols associated with Nazism for anything other than educational or ironic purposes.”) Youthful excess is one thing. Allowing your body to be used to glorify one of the darkest moments in human history is patently immoral.
Furthermore, at 1:24 in the ZDF video Nitkin delights in saying “good crazy things.” I suspect his delight comes from believing he has chosen the right word in English. Perhaps he meant to say ‘really crazy,’ but he is in general defensive…” [in the underground and world of heaby metal] if you didn’t have [such tatoos] you were not serious.” At that moment, his body language portrays disgust at having that side of his personal life invaded. The irony is also that pre-production video portraits of opera singers in general are very scarce these days and difficult for press people to arrange in the first place. They wanted a hook for this one than they found a dandy one.