While the Cop28 gets underway in Dubai, climate change has also disrupted the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The performance of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser was interrupted by protesters shouting “No Opera” from the balconies and unfurling a banner declaring “No Opera on a Dead Planet”.
The inventive protest was accurately planned: people were shouting from both sides of the house. When they were evicted, and the performance seemed ready to proceed, a woman stood up in the orchestra section picking up the relay. The curtain closed again, the woman was removed by security and the Met officials consulted on whether to go on and risk another interruption.
The opera, conducted by Donald Runnicles and with famed baritone Christian Gerhaher as Wolfram, had been in the middle of the second act. Other audience members were not amused, screaming “Shut up”, “Go home” to the protesters.
In the mayhem, the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb appeared on the scene announcing the performance would proceed but the house lights would stay on to help security identify and evict other troublemakers.
But the four-and-a-half-hour opera ambled on to the end (half-an-hour late) with no further disruptions. There were no arrests.
The protest was organized by Extinction Rebellion NYC.
Extinction Rebellion is noted for staging harmless–though annoying and very public–protests all over the Western world, often in cultural contexts such as museums. In this instance, the NYC branch demonstrated they know their Wagner.
The group said in a statement that the demonstration was timed to “coincide with the main character’s declaration that ‘love is a spring to be drunk from’. Contrary to those words spoken on stage, springs are not pure now, because we are in a climate crisis, and our water is contaminated”.
