6.1 Introduction: Agency and Gravity

In 1960, the world of classic music was witnessing a very strong inter-galactic interaction between the two famous theaters: La Scala and Bolshoi were signing a previously unimaginable pact on the perennial exchange of opera singers and ballet dancers. As a result, a new star generation of Soviet singers and Italian dancers was trained in the herein established inter-galactic stellar nursery throughout the 1960–1980s (Schwartz, 1983). One of them was Maria Bieșu. Originally from a small Moldavian village, Bieșu had started her vocal career in the republic of Moldova before she was selected for the two-year internship in La Scala in 1965 (Vdovina, 1984). It was the turning point in her career, which began escalating upon her repatriation in 1967 and immediate promotion to lead dramatic soprano at Bolshoi. Nostalgic for Italy and feeling sad about the inability to live there, Bieșu was, nevertheless, happy with her Soviet career, rejecting many emigration offers from the West (ibid; Rusakova, 2012). Although her stardom was decades before the era of global elite migrations, she could have indeed become a migrant, seeking political asylum and joining the émigré dissent, if she had wished so. As a star of the Bolshoi, she frequently participated in its tours to Europe and America throughout the 1970–80s, yet always returning to Moscow without a moment of hesitation. In one of her post-Soviet interviews to the press, she noted that she would have never left the Soviet Union for any other country (ibid). As she further explained, the reason for her patriotism had been not her fear of the KGB but the rich symbolism of the Bolshoi, embodying her grand social mobility from peasant to national opera supergiant: “My homeland was always the Soviet Union”, she proudly concluded (ibid).

At the center of her decision-making was the power of ‘homeland gravity’ (Hägerstrand, 1957: 2), which is often discussed in migration studies in reference with the person’s attachment to the place of origin or upbringing and the way it is negotiated before, after and/or throughout migration (Tölölyan, 2007; Ahrens & King, 2023). Her story provokes me to explore in this chapter how the homeland gravity may be experienced by my informants, who have actually become the migrants. The chapter opens with an overview of how their ambitions and migratory decisions were influenced by and grounded in the history of opera with attention to the establishment of national operatic schools such as the Soviet opera enterprise. I refer to the most famous and nationally symbolic Soviet conservatories that continue to attract people like my informants even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The chapter shows that the Soviet legacy can be now found everywhere within the post-Soviet opera space, which fosters internal migrations of global elite migrants and their transnational activities. This fluid and multifaceted space has become the natal point in the aspirations of my informants and a key element in the patterns of their transnational employment.

6.2 Dreams and History

6.2.1 Either Moscow or Italy: When Pride Meets World History

‘I initially wanted to study in Kiev, Moscow or St Petersburg’, says the misfortunate Zosya, ‘because they have the best conservatories: Kiev, Moscow and St Petersburg embody the history of the operatic civilization; they have everything: the best vocal culture and the best teachers. Also the best opera houses are in the same city’. Like all other informants, Zosya wanted to study in a famous stellar nursery—that is, in a best conservatory that would be located in a famous city with a best opera house. Her application to the Kiev Conservatory was rejected: ‘I did not have any connections, and I did not know that they did not accept everyone’. The same year, Zosya applied to and was accepted by a less famous conservatory in a smaller Ukrainian city: ‘That consolation prize did not actually work. I was not very happy with my teachers and the overall education there’. The following year, Zosya was intent to reapply to the conservatory in Moscow or St Petersburg. However, her parents did not approve this decision, insisting on her stay in Ukraine and pointing to the long standing political tensions between Russia and Ukraine. ‘They were extremely patriotic, absolutely against my going to Russia’, she says, ‘Otherwise I would have gone, and I think that I should have launched the application to Moscow. Have I insisted, my career would have taken quite a different turn. I could be a giant—not a miserable trafficking victim’.

The application of Glasha to the Russian conservatory of her first choice was also rejected. ‘Unfortunately, my parents did not have any connections in the world of music—neither in St Petersburg nor in Moscow’, she sadly admits, ‘That is why, my St Petersburg application was failed that same year. But I wanted to study only in a best vocal school and only in a good city with rich music traditions’. Looking for an alternative, her wealthy parents suggested that she should matriculate in a good Italian conservatory, which she eventually did.

All my informants confess that, when planning their future migratory and singing careers, they dreamt about studying either in the capital of their native republic, or in Moscow/St Petersburg, or in Italy. ‘I was as if under the spell of our old Soviet legends about Maria Bieșu and many other idols who had mastered their vocal technique in Italy’, notes Glasha. ‘On top of that, the “Anna Netrebko” story about her rise in the St Petersburg conservatory and the Mariinsky Theater was so persuasive that I wanted to be there too’, says Ariadna. The informants also admit that, if they had managed to enroll in those highly desired places and to make the early career progression ‘to a good theater back home, like Netrebko’, they might not have emigrated. As recalled by Saveliy:

Already in the early 2000s, the world of opera was changing in my country: Netrebko always appeared on TV at the center of important events. And I also wanted to be in the middle of everything, at the epicenter of all those groundbreaking processes. I wanted to be the face of the new opera, the face of the new nation. This is childish, of course, but in those days, I wanted to be among the elite and, at the same time, to be loved by the nation.

The informants wanted to study and perform in the best outlets of the operatic industry and also to travel worldwide. They were dreaming about more than career. They wanted a lifestyle, a lifestyle associated with elitism and national visibility—a lifestyle leading to the highflying career and world fame.

To be honest, there is nothing childish in their adolescent geographies of desire because the world of opera can indeed provide such opportunities, resonating with our teenage dreams, penchant for starry career, senses of belonging, national pride, and nostalgia for the lost historical past (Kotnik, 2010, 2016). In this reference, a special tribute is given to the national operatic schools and traditions of Italy and Russia (Frolova-Walker, 2006; Locke, 2009; Wisenthal, 2006). It is not therefore surprising that my informants were longing to study opera specifically in the heart of Russia or Italy. Established in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the operas of these countries have been represented by distinct operatic composers, artworks and vocal techniques, which continue to dominate the global world of music (Wilson, 2010).

‘I was not at all afraid to travel to Italy on my own for studies when I was eighteen’, says Vanda, ‘I had no doubts that it would be a fantastic country because I knew it had the best opera in the world’. Her juvenile argument was not groundless: opera can indeed make its nation internationally attractive, which has happened to Italy. This the country where opera was born, in the sixteenth century, as a distinct artform with a high national and international potential, immediately forming a political alliance with the Medici dynasty (Wilson, 2010). In those days, elite composers and privileged musicians were creating and performing operas exclusively for the Florentine royal elite. The seventeenth century was then marked by the expansion of opera to the public sphere in Italy, with the opening of the first opera house, and its internationalization. Thus by the second half of the seventeenth century, the Italian opera had not only become very popular in all parts of the country but had also started to internationally impact upon the culture of Europe (ibid; Wisenthal, 2006). The eighteenth century left such a historical footprint as a further European expansion of opera, which was still the predominantly aristocratic entertainment. Although Italian opera remained the center of professional gravity for ambitious composers and singers throughout the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, it contributed, during this time shift, to the formation of distinct national operatic schools in many other European countries including Russia (Wilson, 2010).

In Russia, this dialogue between Europeanization and national resurgence had led to the establishment of one of the greatest national schools in opera, noted for distinct artworks with rich national symbolism (Polyakova, 1971). At the end of the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great, who was the first greatest patron of opera, invited Italian and German opera troupes to perform in St Petersburg and Moscow including the premises of the newly built Bolshoi Theater, whose first audience was the ruling aristocratic elite (Bereson, 2002). Only one hundred years later, Alexander III made this legendary theater accessible to the masses (Grinberg, 2011).

Looking back on the history of opera and analyzing the early career aspirations of my informants, I recall the words of the anthropologist Vlado Kotnik. He notes that, in terms of social status, ‘the space of opera was never neutral’ but invariably tied with social status (Kotnik, 2010: 41). Going to the opera house has invariably been ‘a mark of social distinction’—a symbolic logo of social privilege, an exquisite education and a rare intellectual ability to understand true art: not everyone is educated to the level of understanding the subtle meaning and appreciating the true value of an operatic work, added by de jour high prices on opera show tickets in any historical epoch (Kotnik, 2016: 3).

‘I wanted to have that exquisite education’, says Vanda, ‘to become a virtuoso artist who could enchant the public both nationally and internationally so that people would queue up for my concerts and shows’. As she further notes, ‘Yes, I know that in the Soviet era of my idol Maria Bieșu, it was not possible to work in a theater abroad or to go to study in Italy on your own and then remain there. But we can do it now, living in a different world—the global world, where all this is possible’.

6.2.2 Supernova

If we look into the events preceding the globalization of opera, we can clearly see that the period of modern opera can be split into two distinct time shifts. The first half of the twentieth century was associated with the iconic art of Giacomo Puccini, who set the first pre-global socio-political agenda including the issues of colonialism, race and gender raised in all his operas. Above that, this time shift also witnessed the geographical and socio-political expansion of opera as a cultural industry to the United States, with a consequent mushrooming of new opera houses all over the North American continent and a highly interactive dialogue between opera and the emerging cinematograph. The second half of the twentieth century (1950–1980) was then marked by the advent of a new iconic generation of ‘modern world’ opera singers. Their list includes the legendary figures of Maria Callas, Mario del Monaco, Renata Tebaldi, Joan Sutherland, Leontyne Price, Monserrat Caballe, Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni, among many others. Their fame was continuously sustained by Hollywood and its cinematographic technologies.

Their biographies prove that they were not global elite migrants but representatives of the transnational artistic elite enjoying privileged mobility: nationals of Italy, the USA and other western countries, they did not need visas to freely rotate around best world theaters (Segond, 1981; Weatherford, 2014). At the same time, their colleagues from the communist bloc (such as Maria Bieșu) were excluded from the global circulation of that scale, participating only in short-term guest-tours as temporary labor migrants. Global elite migrations as such (leading to second home and concurrent non-stop employment overseas) started only during the period of operatic postmodernism and specifically after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. It was the time belonging to my informants, not the time of their parents or idols but the time of their own—the time of their generation.

The informants say that their parents, who grew up in the Soviet Union long before its collapse, knew that in the 1970s or 1980s such dreams would be unrealistic because the operatic career was not associated with a desired lifestyle on the mass level. ‘If all this would had been happening in the 1970s or 1980s, my folks would have never supported my decision’, notes Klim from Permy (Eastern Russia):

They wouldn’t have had any money to sponsor my education in Moscow and then in Italy because commercial activities were not encouraged in the Soviet Union. All this grand idea of making a success, an income and a good life from anything you want became available to us only after the Soviet collapse. And the life examples were very persuasive: Netrebko had come up to St Petersburg directly from the Russian province – literally from nowhere – and in a jiff, she was already the star of the Mariinsky Theater!

Although very enchanting for many people with university degrees, opera was not associated with a trustworthy occupation in the final years of the Soviet Union within the context of the overall poverty of its population, absence of a legitimate private economy and severe restrictions imposed by the regime on any form of international travel (Polyakova, 1971, 2014; Panchuk, 2006; Kalinovsky, 2016). With the magic hand of the pioneers of global elite migrations such as Anna Netrebko, opera became a signifier of a good western life (Kotkina, 2017). The historical tribute should be thus given to post-Soviet space in the assessment of the impetus for global elite migrations in opera. The very beginning of the New Millennium was marked by an extreme dynamic in the world of opera: Netrebko’s first international success at the Salzburg Opera Festival in 2002, and her awarding by the Russian president with the nationally prestigious and rarely given Russia’ State Prize (Mattison, 2005). Those were just a few, among many other, public images of her success circulating in mass media at that time. Her advent was a product of shifting geopolitics, compatible with what astronomers call the ‘supernova’—a supergiant star that suddenly increases in brightness, resulting in its powerful explosion that stimulates starburst, or formation of new star generations (Branch & Wheeler, 2017). ‘That was breathtaking’, says Glasha, ‘to see all this happening in the world of post-Soviet opera and to think that everything was possible and that I might be the next’. On that ceremony, Anna Netrebko was publicly announced ‘a bright new star on the Russian and world musical stage’ (Mattison, 2005). In response, the space of post-Soviet opera was immediately perceived by my informants as a new cosmodrome for initiating a great astrogation journey to explore new galaxies of the global opera.

It was the beginning of the era of the new global opera producers, including the Russian maestro Valeriy Gergiev, and their emerging global operatic empires/galaxies, followed by new A-level opera houses in the Global South such as the Dubai Opera and the Royal Opera House of Muscat welcoming global elite migrants from the former Soviet bloc (Culture.RU, 2016; Livak, 2018).

Post-Soviet space has thus become an important segment in the networking spatiality of the world opera for the following reasons. First, Russia, which occupies the central and major part of this geopolitical and socio-cultural space, has been historically associated, since the eighteenth century, with one of the main leading operatic schools and with one of the best vocal education systems in the world (Grinberg, 2011). At the same time, that superb-quality system of opera education and production remained closed for international cultural exchange for seventy years under the Soviets (Polyakova, 1971; Golomstock, 1994; Hakobyan, 1998; Elagin, 2002). Even artists from the Bolshoi Theater, such as Maria Bieșu and Vladimir Atlantov were never able to stay, for a long time, in Italy or any other western country or to travel overseas freely (Hakobyan, 1998; Kotkina, 2002). That is why the collapse of the socialist bloc in 1991 led to the dramatic explosion of global elite migrations among opera singers from the region at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the former Soviet states suddenly opened their doors to the global world, and their many well-prepared and ambitious singers started to move westwards in the global milieu, where the previous travel- and citizenship- restrictions had been lifted (Isaakyan, 2022). However, we should remember that most of the former Soviet bloc (except for the Baltic States) is not the European Union and that these migrating professionals, consequently, need visas for entering overseas countries, thus falling within the ‘migrant’ category in the direct meaning of this word (Ahrens & King, 2023).

6.2.3 Natal Point: Soviet Opera

The complexity of the current geopolitical situation and the historicity of the operatic education in the former Soviet region do not make it easy to define the post-Soviet operatic space in one word. Given the unified history of opera and its training in the Soviet Union, it is a complex socio-political space where post-Soviet nationalism and globalization find themselves at the crossroads and in a dialogue. It is a space of global cultural production, where the leading role has been always played by Russia, and although significantly challenged and having become more subtle recently, this connection is still tangible. It is at least until 2022 that this Russian pillar remained firmly in place. This is illuminated by the perennial dynamics of operatic training in the region.

The leading role in the creation of the Soviet operatic space belongs to the following four conservatories: Moscow Conservatory, St Petersburg Conservatory, Kiev Conservatory Gnessin Academy (Barcalaya, 2021; Elagin, 2002). Created during different time-shifts before or after the October Revolution in Russia or Ukraine, these conservatories were always tightly knit relationally, well networked and interconnected under the Soviet rule. These four conservatories were always interacting in their networking activities, including the training of students and young artists, inter-school student and teacher exchange, internships, and collaborative workshops and master classes. They were considered the best vocal schools in the Soviet Union: they were the educational and training hubs with superb vocal teachers, coach-pianists and vocal education curricula (Golomstock, 1994; Frolova-Walker, 2006). The historical cultural links between these operatic stellar nurseries are firmly still in place, even despite the current geopolitical turmoil in the region. Above that, many other conservatories were foundered throughout the Soviet regime. Old and new, they were, for a long time, orchestrating the landscape of vocal education and training in the Soviet Union and even after its collapse. Some of them are worth an honorary mention as places where the majority of my informants have received their first operatic education.

Founded in 1862, the St Petersburg Conservatory is the oldest conservatory in Russia and in the post-Soviet space (Friel, 1977; Nelson, 2004). Half of my informants (from various republics) launched their first applications to this conservatory, with only four managing to be accepted. The other half of them were trying to apply to the Moscow Conservatory, with only two people accepted. The main historical competitor of the operatic St Petersburg, the Moscow Conservatory was foundered a few years later in 1866 (ibid). Amidst many operatic schools scattered throughout the post-Soviet space, the other four are also historically considered the best in Eastern Europe: the Saratov Conservatory (founded in 1912), the Gnessin Academy (foundered in Moscow in 1944), the Kazan Conservatory (foundered in 1945) and the Novosibirsk Conservatory (foundered in 1956) (Polyakova, 1971). Half of the informants who had not been accepted to St Petersburgh or Moscow eventually attended these four conservatories. They feel very proud of having shaped as the ‘young stars’ specifically in Russia, at the epicenter of the post-Soviet and East European opera.

Also half of the interviewees (30 people) received their first operatic education in conservatories based in their republics of origin such as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Moldova and Belorusy. ‘We have very rich musical traditions and one of the best vocal schools in my homeland of Georgia’, says one of my informants:

That is why, I always wanted to study in Tbilisi, which I did. I also thought that maybe some time later, I would improve my technique through a post-graduate program or an internship in Russia. But I eventually went to Italy to study in a vocal academy there because it was easier than to get to Moscow or St Petersburg.

Half of them (14 people) feel happy about their education at origin and grateful to the Soviet policy on opera, which is not surprising. In the Soviet Union, opera was ‘a highly symbolic centerpiece of all its investments in cultural construction’ (Kalinovsky, 2016) because this governmental policy had created a specific identity for the Soviet Union as a European and world cultural center (ibid; Kotkina, 2013).

However, the space of Soviet opera was geographically uneven in terms of musical traditions and training resources. Some of the republics, including Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, had opera traditions established already by the end of the nineteenth century with the support from the Tzarist Russia (Nelson, 2004). This contrasts with the operatic landscape in Middle Asia and Belorusy, where the opera houses were built only throughout the 1930s, under the patronage of leading musicians and composers from the Soviet Russia and Ukraine (Castro, 2019; Shin, 2017). The political campaign for opening new opera houses in Asian and Caucasian Soviet republics, in bigger cities of Eastern Russia extended throughout the 1940s (Kotkina, 2013). Though in Middle Asia, conservatories were created only in the 1950s (Kalinovsky, 2016). Thus by the mid 1950s, opera was the most developed form of Soviet music (Castro, 2019). And by the 1960s, every Soviet republican capital had an opera house and a conservatory. So did many Soviet medium-sized cities (Golomstock, 1994; Kalinovsky, 2016). All these conservatories exist until today. However, my informants’ early career aspirations were mostly fueled by the pre-revolutionary roots. The informants, therefore, targeted older conservatoires as their ‘first choice’ (even outside their native republics), with the post-WW2 schools left as ‘the consolation prize’.

6.3 Post-Soviet Opera Space: The Path to the Bolshoi Runs Through…Western Europe

6.3.1 Stellar Nurseries: Where Is the Soviet ‘Treadmill’?

‘There was a time when I wanted to be an opera star’, remember all of them. But did they know at that point how stars were made? Star formation is, in fact, a key property of both elite networks (Petersen, 2017; Walter, 2016) and celestial galaxies (Dickinson, 2004; Smith, 2004). The ability to raise new stars is what makes a galaxy or network stronger and more desirable for astrogation. Looking for spaces that give birth to stars, astronauts seek to understand processes underpinning the starburst (Stahler & Palla, 2004). So do ambitious artists, who also want to become a star themselves (Barkey & Godart, 2013; Hartley, 2021; Shepard, 2010). All my informants had this aspiration for a long time, longing to conquer the most famous galaxies of the global opera universe.

Galaxies may indeed have a stellar nursery—a specific segment of space where stars are created; and a specific space can turn into a stellar nursery under the two main conditions (Prialnik, 2000; Stahler & Palla, 2004). This space should have enough molecular cores to serve as raw material for star production (ibid). And there should be also ‘agitational forces’ in place such as nearby stars or supernovae: outside influences are necessary to create a star (ibid; Smith, 2004; Wheeler, 2007). On analogy, a highly desired elite network that is hosted by a prestigious opera house or conservatory is noted for its unique resources such as vocal training methods and rigidly selected recruitment of students [which are akin to the celestial raw material] and a unique concentration of best vocal teachers, pianist-coaches and associated brokers (Harrington, 2020; Hartley, 2021; Shepard, 2010), who act like the celestial agitational forces in their collaborative star-making project.

While promoting its national opera, the Soviet government was using both new and old material in order to create operatic stellar nurseries of high quality. Thus alongside with newly-built conservatories and opera houses, the pre-revolutionary opera institutions were placed at the center of the Soviet cultural production. Operatic institutions, such as those situated in Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev and Tbilisi, had the best vocal tutors, pianists and orchestra conductors in Eastern Europe, who had been trained before the October Revolution (Polyakova, 1971; Panchuk, 2006; Bereson, 2002; Barcalaya, 2021). That is why, their relational galaxies were highly desirable by my informants.

Astronomers further note that a stellar nursery can appear as a result of a supermassive black hole or an intergalactic collision (Branch & Wheeler, 2017). With its rigid KGB and Communist Party control over art and society, the Soviet totalitarian space had harbored many institutions and networks that resembled a black hole because of their difficult membership conditions, continuous network obligations and severe disciplinary sanctions (Schwartz, 1983; Frolova-Walker & Walker, 2012; Frolova-Walker, 2016; Kotkina, 2013). That was added by the prohibition to travel without a special permission from the state and the “black boxed” elite’s feeling of being captured with no way out (Isaakyan, 2010). The starburst in such places was generated by their rigid regimes of virtuoso training, as the autobiographical work of the Soviet musician Boris Elagin (2002) shows.

On top of that, there were also many networking, or/intergalactic, collisions among the top-level Soviet opera institutions and even sometimes between them and European operatic networks. For example, already during the Stalin era of the 1930–1950s, a number of national musical departments, or music centers, were created on the premises of these two conservatories specifically for the training of musicians including opera singers from Middle Asian Soviet republics and various autonomous republics of Russia (Kotkina, 2017; Shin, 2017). Future musicians from Georgia and Armenia also participated in these training programs. The 1930s also gave impetus to the so-called National Art Decades to provide musical exchange (including that in opera training) between all Soviet republics, also with the leading role of Russia and Ukraine (ibid; Castro, 2019).

For example, the Kiev Conservatory, the alma mater of my three informants and the network historically shared with the Moscow operatic circles, was first created in 1913 as a musical college on the premises of the Russian Musical Society (Buckler, 2011). Until the October Revolution, the college was governed by the leading Russian composers Serguei Rakhmaninov and Alexander Glazunov. In 1938, it was converted into the State Conservatory under the name of P. Chaikovsky, proudly sharing this name with the Moscow Conservatory. Today it is known as the National Chaikovsky Academy, still preserving its Russian name even in the milieu of the post-2022 geopolitical conflict.

On the same note, for almost 200 years, Russian and Georgian musicians have been living and working in close professional collaboration (Barcalaya, 2021). Although their younger generation, as illuminated by my informants from Georgia, do not identify themselves as ‘post-Soviet opera singers’, they still seek to benefit from the collaboration with Russian operatic institutions. This is not surprising because, looking back into the history, we can see that the central role in the creation of the Tbilisi State Conservatory (in the republic of Georgia) belongs to famous Russian composers who were standing at the foundation of its predecessor—the Imperial Russian Musical Society in Georgia (Barcalaya, 2021). This explains why almost all my Georgian informants have studied or improved their vocal technique specifically in Moscow.

What made Moscow especially attractive for them was also the historically groundbreaking intergalactic interaction that had taken place during the Cold War era. It was the time when the La Scala and Bolshoi signed the agreement in 1960 on the exchange of their artists under the assistance of the Soviet Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtzeva and her close friend Maria Callas, the pact that remained in place even years after the Soviet collapse (Nemy, 1972; Vdovina, 1984). It was a famous governmental program for recruiting the best young singers to the Bolshoi: aspiring opera singers from all over the country who were soloists at capital city opera houses or graduates of capital city conservatories were eligible to participate in the competition for this exchange fellowship, leading to their consequent employment at Bolshoi upon return as a prerequisite (Kotkina, 2002). They were the children of the Soviet Thaw, the ‘young stars’ from the short-term yet very famous stellar nursery collaboratively foundered by the most iconic artist of her time Maria Callas and by the no less legendary Soviet geopolitical leader Ekaterina Furtzeva. Very subtle geopolitical actors, those two women-leaders had brought together the revived post-WW2 world art and the post-Stalin liberal Soviet geopolitics. And all those early career Soviet singers who were the selected finalists for this inter-galactic stelar nursery project were actually the young stars producing their first light in the stardust of Maria Callas’ supernova and in the emerging white hole. They became the first stars from Maria Callas’ new galaxy that was rapidly evolving on the wheels of the old world La Scala’s galactic spiral.

‘Those lucky singers were such well known legends that I was sure that once I got to Moscow or a conservatory in another capital city, I will easily get to Italy’, says Milena. As one of my male informants proudly notes:

Anatoly Solovyanenko, one of the holders of this award, was from my native town in Donbass; and I was thinking that, if he had been able to get to La Scala from the Kiev Opera, why shouldn’t I? I know that he was not able to build his career in Italy because of all those communist restrictions. But in my time, it would not be an issue. The main problem for me was to get to his conservatory.

‘I was sure that the way to La Scala should lie through Moscow or Kiev’, says Zosya. In this connection, Ray (2006: 409) argues that some occupations may have ‘aspirational windows’, or sets of well-known career opportunities that exist in the given socio-economic domain. Ray further points to the ‘hedonic treadmill’ that opens through them, leading to an on-going increase of such windows (ibid: 410). This resonates with and explains the logic of operatic stellar nurseries whether in the Soviet Union or in Europe, given their interconnectivity: an education in a high-rank conservatory will provide the student with highly convertible and almost universal—inter-galactic—human capital including virtuoso technique of singing and social connections because such a conservatory can be connected to an elite Young Singers Training Program and/or an elite theater often through the same professionals working there.

However, when my informants were initiating their careers, they did not live in the Soviet Union anymore. In their living space of post-Soviet opera, the envisioned stellar nurseries and their aspirational treadmills did not always work in predicted ways therefore. Their imaginary pathways to Italy did not always run through Moscow but often with unexpected twists. They had never been the stellar products of Callas’ supernova: their time in world opera became a different geopolitical reality.

6.3.2 Paradoxes of Post-Soviet Reality

Almost twenty years ago, Marfa thought she was ‘lucky’ to study in one of the best old Soviet conservatories. In contrast with her teenage expectations, she sadly recalls now:

I remember a very poor system of vocal education there, with very indifferent teachers and always lazy pianist coaches. My teacher had been a relatively famous vocalist in the past. But she was so indifferent to me. The allocated academic hours were not enough for making my voice sound good. I remember being very excited at the very beginning. I graduated only for the diploma.

After graduation from that conservatory, she migrated to Italy as a domestic worker with the help of her high school friends back home and their transnational networks; got married there to a local music entrepreneur whose elderly mother she was taking care of; and completed a course of studies in an Italian vocal academy, where she significantly improved her vocal technique.

On the contrary, Nezhdana, who has graduated from a smaller conservatory in a peripheral town, admits encountering a very good teacher there who gave her an excellent vocal technique:

I wanted to apply to Moscow or St Petersburg initially. But then my mother (who is a professional musician herself) remembered that she knew a very good teacher in that other town and advised me to apply there. That was very wise in terms of both the quality of education and tuition fees. That teacher was awesome, which was the most important thing for me. It was really strange to find such a good teacher in such a miserable and dilapidated place, amidst all that poverty.

Natasha also benefited from support of a vocal teacher who was living and working in a music college in a provincial town and who helped her to work on her vocal technique:

I thought I was lucky to enroll in that elite conservatory. I had worked like a slave on two jobs for several years, trying to save some money before getting there. When I eventually got there, I was in heaven. But the reality came to be very disappointing: no good teachers, no good resources in vocal training, just garbage, a very amateur level of teaching and training. Looking back on it, I think there were possibly good specialists. But I was not lucky to work with them. I felt devastated when a friend of mine (who, as I now understand, had been in my shoes) recommended a retired vocal teacher living in a small town a bit far from where I was based. So I started to travel there to stay in my friends’ house for a couple of weeks every few months just to take private lessons with him. And that was enough for improving my level of performance.

My other informants were also disillusioned by the myth about the best quality of vocal education in famous historical places. They admit that the operatic education in Russia and other former Soviet republics was ‘very uneven’. There could be very incompetent teachers and support personnel in famous places who were ‘working far not with everyone’. At the same time, there might be a skillful vocal trainer somewhere in a far remote place in the province, working in a small conservatory or even musical college. For the informants, it was mostly the matter of good luck to encounter this specific person. In the majority of cases, they either ‘suffered’ from the poor quality of education or were directed by their friends and colleagues to take private lessons with this person. Nevertheless, the old Soviet interconnectivity was firmly in place because such ‘sidelined good’ teachers were still members of the older Soviet artistic networks, including former singers and former conservatory professors.

The space of post-Soviet opera has, in fact, its own specificities, which can explain why my informants have had such experiences in their envisioned stellar nurseries. This space is indeed still very interconnected and full of intergalactic interactions and collisions, where people know each other and where new music colleges/academies and new projects appear, though sometimes on a temporary basis (Khokhlov, 2015; Vilisov & Krolevsky, 2017).

However, this terra is also very patchy, in terms of funding and allocated resources, which is its second feature (ibid). Third, the unevenness of the operatic enterprise in most former Soviet republics is grounded in the nature of its control and patronage, which is the third characteristic. As noted by Panchuk (2006), it is this historically robust state control over opera and the consequent discrimination of theaters and musicians in the distribution of resources that make the post-Soviet opera enterprise very unsteady and patchy as well as dependent on individual theatrical directors who get most of the grants and their power, which is especially the case for Russia. The total state control over opera in the Soviet Union is mimicked by the commercialization of art in the post-Soviet Russia: its opera management is still underpinned by totalitarian principles including financial state support to those theaters, singers and networks that are closer to the political and financial elite and systematic negligence to the career development of the majority of individual singers (ibid; Kalinovsky, 2016).

Even after the Soviet collapse, the system of communication between the state and theaters remains practically the same in most former Soviet republics, with the difference that opera is now the most poorly state-sponsored artform (ibid). While the state financing makes more than the 70% of Russian opera budgeting, additional grants are extremely limited, with half of them consistently allocated to the Bolshoi Theater (Panchuk, 2006; Khokhlov, 2015). The majority of post-Soviet theaters have, therefore, failed in their performance and productivity (Chernozatonskaya, 2015). The destroyed cultural unity of the Soviet Union is especially seen in the situation with national republican theaters. For example, the deceased Soviet movie star Andreis Zhagars, who was also a successful entrepreneur, a nationally famous politician and the head of the Latvian Opera in 1996–2013, had actually transformed his theater into an elite cultural enterprise by the beginning of the twenty-first century. This is in contrast with the unstable economic situation in the opera houses of Odessa (Ukraine), Tallin (Estonia) or Minsk (Belorusy), where for many years there was no “strong” theater director to compete for and win grants (Sadykh-Zadeh, 2010).

Given this and also the historical roots of internal migrations within the spacious and interconnected galaxies of post-Soviet opera, the question is now where specifically to go. ‘When my friends ask me and when I also ask myself why I do not want to work back home, I think that I could possibly return’, speculates Tisha, ‘But where? This is the question. Back home, it is not possible to get a relatively stable position in a good theater, with good vocal training resources and a good salary. It is all very corrupt. But in a smaller place, it would not be possible to survive as a person and professional: I would be very poor, hardly making both ends meet, and without a voice’. ‘Prestigious and well-funded theaters like the Latvian Opera or the Bolshoi are not easily accessible’, says Glasha, ‘Whereas smaller theaters who can literally take anyone are not the places where you would like to work permanently. Still even such places have important resources for people like me, and you can use them wisely’.

6.4 A Very Fluid Space: Work with Soul?

‘You should use your home space wisely’, I hear from all my informants. For years, they continue to rotate within the former Soviet region even after they finalized their immigration decisions. This makes me think about what exactly they do when they temporarily return to geographical places that are close to their home, where specifically they return, and for what reasons they keep returning.

6.4.1 What and Where?

Their transnational activities ‘back home’ include the following projects: (1) work in a local theater, which may be either part of their contract or independent from it; (2) vocal teaching and invited guest-singing in concerts and commercial shows, which may be either paid or nonpaid; and (3) their own professional vocal training, which can be either formal (through a formal training program) or informal. Let us now look back into the four transnational employment scenarios, which were presented in the previous chapter.

For example, Leo, who illuminates Scenario #2 (‘B-level’ employment), works on lead roles in European theaters of Tiers 2 and 3, while also singing from time to time in Tier-2 theaters in Russia (usually for two months per year) and teaching masterclasses (for two-four weeks) in various places also in Russia. He confesses that he cannot find employment in his republic because the operatic market there is hierarchal and, therefore, very closed. However, he is ‘being continuously invited by various modest theaters in Russia’ to sing specific roles that are important for his career; and while working there, he also runs vocal training workshops for Russian conservatory students ‘who dream to go to Italy’:

I never studied in Russia. But at a certain point, I started looking for a theater to test the role of Alfredo, and one of my former teachers back home recommended me to people who were staging Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata in Russia at that time. I discussed this with my theatrical agent and we inserted it into my schedule. But a couple of years ago, they stopped staging this opera. Luckily, by that time, I had finally managed to get this role in Italy. Now I am probing another challenging role – Mario Cavaradossi from Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca – in another mediocre Russian theater. I hope to get enough experience in this role to e able to sing Cavaradossi in Italy one day too.

Being in-career, Leo, nevertheless, envies Stella (who has approached Scenario #1, with the ‘A-level’ employment) because she has the permanent parttime ‘lead soprano’ position in a good theater in her republic of origin, where she also teachers vocal classes for interns at a high rate commensurate with her education. ‘I admire her very much as a professional and, at the same time, I envy her because the national theater where she is singing is really very good’, he explains, ‘There are many good tutors and mentors there who can assist the singer with his/her technique. For me, it is still a big problem: I always have to look for somebody like a good vocal coach’.

Apart from that, Stella is invited a couple of times per year to sing in special and highly paid concerts and commercial TV shows back home. While Leo sometimes sings as an unpaid invited performer in a small place in Russia or Ukraine. ‘I do this because this is part of my own vocal training’, he says, ‘This is how I improve my vocal technique’. As he further explains, it is paramount for an opera singer to ‘grow professionally all the time’ and to have a special coach who could be available any time to help the singer improve her/his voice. It is an ongoing spiral of stellar nursery education and training, which should never stop until the singer terminates his/her career. ‘It is very difficult to find such a coach’, says Leo:

It is difficult because there are not many good tutors who could understand the nature and the fragility of each voice and your personal technical needs, and also because those employed in elite places usually charge a lot for their lessons or consultations. And when I hear from my friends that there is a talented vocal teacher in a small place such as modest conservatory, provincial theater or even unknown vocal college, I really trust this unique opportunity. In small places, true artists can sometimes work miracles with your voice, without charging a fortune. In return, they may expect you to contribute something to their local community. So I have to agree to give such free concerts, although it is annoying at times.

However, Bronislava, who is currently following Scenario #3 (‘C-level’ employment), would probably find Leo more fortunate than herself: also singing in Tier-2 and 3 theaters but on secondary roles, she takes very low paid lead roles as gig jobs but in good theaters in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine (as a reserve singer, or a substitute for the main artist) and also conducts nonremunerated masterclasses while singing in such places. Comparing herself with colleagues like Leo, she believes that she is less competitive and that she has, therefore, no other option than to accept such spontaneous and poorly remunerated gig jobs back home.

‘She is still wanted by not bad places back home, where she can use resources for being in-career and for moving forward’, says Luchezar, who is currently trying to reach the professional level of Bronislava. At present, he is employed on episodic roles in Tier-2 theaters in Europe, struggling with Scenario #4 and taking lead roles in low-rank theaters throughout the former Soviet region, including the Middle Asia. ‘Since I have graduated from a very good Italian conservatory with the master’s degree, I have all credentials to teach back home’, he adds, ‘To be honest, I do it for a very slow rate and often free of charge as part of a masterclass. But I need this experience and these professional references in case I would like to teach in Italy if my singing career stops’. Luchezar confesses that he is not sure how long he can tolerate this ‘extremely exhausting and humiliating lifestyle’, which is associated with the ‘D-level’ mode of operatic career.

‘It is also very annoying and extremely exhausting to look for such opportunities and to ask people back home if they need your lessons or performance’, says Faina. Unfortunately, not always my informants are invited by their countries or regions of origin. Oftentimes, such performative and teaching activities are initiated and organized by the interviewee him/herself, especially in cases that fall within Scenarios #3 and 4 of transnational employment. Such migrant-singers target their native towns or post-Soviet places where they have professional connections dating to their ‘baby-star’ years of conservatory/college education. ‘I had updated my contract with a new job offer, and I was learning a new and extremely difficult role’, explains Faina, whose case resonates with Leo:

When you prepare a new role, you need a good coach-pianist who could direct you very carefully and who could also understand the nuances of your voice. This person should be a competent and patient musician. My Italian pianist was a nice person and a very competent musician in terms of intonation and rhythm. But he was a bit careless working with my voice. He did not understand why it was difficult for me to sing certain parts of the music score and how to make it easier for me. However, a good coach must understand and correct this. So I was really anxious, and we had a bit of a conflict around it. Then a friend of mine with whom I had studied in a conservatory mentioned a good pianist working in her native town. I trusted that friend. That is why, I decided to go there. It was a place where I had never been before and where I would have never wanted to live, to be honest. But the person was superb, and we quickly learnt that role. She was an elderly pianist in a local concert hall, and she asked me to give a thematic concert dedicated to Russian music. I made three shows there. That was my paycheck to them. It looks very weird, like a treasure hunt. But it is worth it: when it comes to professionalism, I invariably trust Russia and other post-Soviet places. They have such tremendous resources for international career. I think migrants who work overseas like myself should use these resources more often: they should turn around to see these hidden resources.

As a paycheck for professional support, my temporarily returning informants—or ‘re-turning migrants’, as Khachiq Tölölyan (2007) calls such people— also use their ‘home’ gravitated transnational activities for money raising to make a charitable act of donating to disabled children, victims of war, abused women and refugees on the local or regional level. ‘It is very important for an opera singer to remember that s/he has a natal point where you can return to accumulate new resources’, says Timur, ‘Homeland gravity is important: this is what makes us stronger as musicians and migrants’.

‘Gravity is important’…But where exactly do they return? What specific places do they gravitate toward? In migration literatures, return or gravitation is often associated with the country of origin and/or the hometown (Hägerstrand, 1957; King & Kuschminder, 2022). However, the real geography of re-turning migrants is much more fluid (Grzymala-Kazlowski, 2018, 2020; Ahrens & King, 2023; Erdal et al., 2023). The re-turning trajectories of my informants point to the portability, or polymorphism, of their center of gravity. Thus to accumulate new resources, they may return to the following spaces: (1) their own locale such as hometown or, even more narrowly, home conservatory; (2) the country of origin (with returns to a place different from hometown); and (3) the whole post-Soviet region—that is, another former Soviet republic.

In her social media, my informant Mlada once intrigued her fans, ‘Guess my favorite flower!’ As she told me in the interview, ‘Amazing that my fans were thinking about roses, camelias and lilac because those may be associated with the arias and romances that I sing. While my favorite flower is dandelion—just a dandelion, the symbol of my childhood. When I think about it, I always think about my hometown and the meadow behind our house. In summer, it is always full of yellow dandelions’. She herself keeps returning to her native town every year for professional training because she still receives informal support from her first vocal teacher and each time sings in her alma mater college as an act of gratitude.

However, hometown does not always act as the center of gravity in the migration trajectories of my informants. They sometimes participate in a concert in their native town if it has rich musical traditions and can offer a good audience of opera loving people. For example, the cities of Krasnoyarsk and Kazan have high-ranked Soviet conservatories and the international reputation as the navel points of the deceased opera super-giants Dmitry Hvorostovsky and Fyodor Shalyapin. The temporary return of my informants is mostly bound to this type of urban locality, even if it is not the place of their birth or upbringing.

Their homeland gravity is thus very fluid. In some cases, their ‘back-home’ cosmodrome may be their country of origin, for example, Russia for a Russian singer, although not necessarily with the native town as its locus. In resonance with the cities of Krasnodar and Kazan, the informants’ center of gravity can be a place imbued with opera history and, consequently, with a special symbolic meaning—a place located somewhere in Russia or even outside it yet within the post-Soviet space. Alternatively, it can be a locale associated with new geopolitics and new resources. Such historically famous places as Moscow and St Petersburg—or Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan and a new elitist place in the post-Soviet and Asian operatic industries—may provide my informants from various republics with opportunities of internship and professional training, including a participation in training programs for ‘young’ singers. As the interviews show, a small peripheral town also reveals a very strong gravitational power if it offers my informants ad hoc career resources necessary for their professional growth at this particular moment such as a good vocal teacher or a vacancy for a lead role.

6.4.2 Professional Transnationalism, or Reverse Glocalization

Although these ‘home-oriented’ transnational activities are important for my informants, they are, at the same time, not always easy to implement. Performing or teaching at origin primarily requires their physical presence. In this reference, the majority of my informants admit that they are ‘not yet absolutely free to plan’ their own performance programs and schedules. This is normally arranged by their agents who may have their own perspectives or be constrained by the network requirement. As the interviewees explain, in many cases, a theater or a musical academy back home has a specific slot for performing or teaching. While the agent may suggest such a schedule of transnational work that would conflict with the schedule of the intended ‘back-home’ activities. When this happens, the informant gives preferences to the formal contract and waits ‘for another chance to work for home’. As Matvei says:

Once I found a very good musical academy in Russia, where people knew my friends, and I was recommended to teach there. But I also had the contract obligation to sing in a small German theater, and the agent said he could not do anything to change the schedule. So I missed that chance to teach while it could have been a very good professional experience. You really need to plan such events well in advance, which is almost impossible because such gig jobs usually pop up unplanned. Alternatively, you should engage in such activities in-between your contracts: when, for example, your previous formal contract has just finished and you have not yet finalized the new one. Then you can negotiate such schedules to a certain extent so the agent would know in advance.

However, in spite of such ‘transnational obligations’ and related bureaucratic challenges (Ahrens & King, 2023: 3), all my informants seek to perform and teach in their country/region of origin for the following reasons. Scholars of migration studies note that these transactions have a very complex spatiality, in which material and immaterial incentives invariably interact with each other (Carling, 2014; Ahrens & King, 2023). Thus Ambrosini (2014) notes the role of symbolism in the transnationalism of skilled migrants. They are indeed very strong symbolic actors, argues Carling (2014). This is widely observed in the back-home transnational activities of, for example, academics and medical doctors who migrate from the post-communist bloc to western Europe and North America and continue to engage in various activities back home only because of their non-rational desire to do something for the homeland (Isaakyan, 2010; Laurence, 2002; Habti, 2019, 2021; Guo, 2022).

Compared with them, my informants do not do anything back home as an act of good will: all their home-gravitated actions are very pragmatic and tied to the overall pattern of their global work. Through their transnational activities within the post-Soviet space, they accumulate new resources for advancing their careers overseas. This non-altruistic, or pragmatic, homeland gravitation illuminates what Isaakyan and Triandafyllidou (2017) define as ‘professional transnationalism’: this form of transnationalism conveys transnational activities that become inseparable from the professionalism of the migrant and his/her formal work. For my informants, professional transnationalism is the backbone of their career development. That is why, the major goal of their voluntary temporary returns is to facilitate their further transnational career, even if such activities are articulated within the ‘cry of the soul’ rhetoric.

The differences in these motivations can be, perhaps, explained by the differences in the accreditation across professions. For example, medical doctors from the Soviet Union who are now based on Finland (Habti, 2019, 2021), Soviet academics who live and work in the UK and the USA (Isaakyan, 2010) or Chinese highly educated professionals living in diaspora (Laurence, 2002; Guo, 2022) are met with hostility and mistrust back home when they try to engage in charity work or unpaid knowledge transfer activities. The local hostility is also grounded in the overall mistrust to overseas diplomas and credentials in China and other non-western countries (Lei, 2020).

Unlike medical doctors and many other highly skilled professionals who become migrants, artists like my informants do not need to confirm their home degrees at destination or vice versa. The unregulated nature of their occupational domain (music) implies that any experience accumulated in their countries of origin can easily become a legitimate credential in transnational employment. We can understand this phenomenon as trans-galactic capital, which is globally accepted in all professional networks. This trans-galactic capital has been accumulated in their post-Soviet stellar nurseries before and also post their migration. At the same time, the artistic professional experience and the musical education received overseas (for example, in Italy) is also valid back home. Therefore, targeted post-Soviet theaters welcome the informants’ small contributions in return for gaining additional credentials such as specific work experience or training. This adds the overweighing pragmatism to most of their home-gravitated activities.

The benefits that my informants get through their home visits are actually what migration scholars call ‘reverse remittances’ (Mazzucato, 2011), or resources sent to migrants by their family members and other people left home (Boccagni, 2015; Ambrosini, 2018; Della Puppa & Ambrosini, 2022). Whereas other skilled migrants often transfer their knowledge to their home community with the main purpose to contribute to its capacity building (Kuschminder, 2014), my informants seek to receive such transfers of knowledge, in the first place. The difference thus also lies in the directionality of the transnational benefits, or herein generated remittances, which make my informants very ego-centric transnational actors. Moreover, the noted reverse remittances such as valid work experience or a new vocal skill are self-generated by my informants: they do not passively receive their new resources from home but make an effort to travel there and to find these valid resources across different post-Soviet localities. Their self-generated reverse remittances are an outcome of their migrant agency, which is very rational and ‘glocal’, as the scholars of globalization would say.

In fact, the majority of skilled migrants’ transnational activities and remittances may be understood as the ‘practices of glocalization’—or behaviors involving a combination of global and local activities or products (Robertson, 2014; Isaakyan & Triandafyllidou, 2017). In this connection, Rolland Robertson (2014) points to the unilateral flow of glocalization, which is illuminated by a distribution of global products that are made adjusted to local needs and modified accordingly. This is illuminated by Indian migrants in Europe who often open the “Eurostyle” beauty salons during their home visits, adjusting the western standards of body-care to the tastes and habits of local people back home (Isaakyan & Triandafyllidou, 2017). Another example is a local modification of the globally transmitted North American TV shows to match the specificity of a local language and the culture of an audience (Robertson, 2014). In my case, the informants do not modify their western practices to fit the local needs of their home communities but vice versa: they actually use the local practices and products from home to fit their global work agenda.

‘I have learned to be very pragmatic and adjusting in my decisions and actions’, notes Klava, ‘When you are looking for jobs or when your agent is looking for jobs for you, the first thing that matters is your experience of singing a particular role. As a dramatic soprano, you are expected to have some experience singing Tosca. But where am I supposed to gain this experience if I have recently graduated from the conservatory or if I have never sung it before?’ To compensate for this weakness in their resumes, my informants decide to invest in voluntary work and singing for reduced fees in their country or region of origin. ‘Yes, the only option is to look for this experience back home’, further explains Klava:

Sometimes when you look for a short-term job in Russia or Ukraine somewhere in a peripheral theatre, they may not even ask about your experience. They only look at your diploma from an Italian conservatory and give you the desired role. A desired role in an unknown theatre is something that you can use as a valid credential in Italy. Of course, having learnt and practiced this role in Russia, I will have to change some technical elements when I go back to Italy.

In terms of probing a vocal masterpiece, the informants admit that their perennial or temporary tutors at destination often help them to learn and/or to polish specifically the Russian repertoire for further concerts in Europe and international concourses. The informants note that some of their tutors at origin may actually understand that this repertoire will be sung specifically for the Italian audience and may therefore suggest to use a specific Italian vocal technique or to add a verbal description to the performance. ‘When I was practicing the romances of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’, recalls Ada, ‘my Russian tutor suggested that I should use the vocal style of the Italian spinto soprano to show the audience that this music is very close to the Italian composers Giacomo Puccini and Ottorino Respighi. He also advised me to explain the meaning of each romance to the audience and to stress that the work of Respighi had been greatly influenced by the music of Rimsky-Korsakov’.

Linguistically difficult and culturally specific, the Russian vocal repertoire has been always in great demand in the world opera, given the historical value of the great Russian music. ‘I am pleased to think that I can sing anything because I am a native speaker of Russian’, says Timur, ‘Russian is my second language: I know it since childhood’:

In fact, Italian, German or French arias can be very well performed by a singer of any nationality because these languages are relatively easy to master, given that they are taught in all conservatories. On the contrary, Russian arias and romances, written by the greatest composers of all times, can be sung only by native speakers of Russian like myself. This is because the Russian pronunciation is extremely difficult to master for a non-native speaker while the quality of pronunciation influences the quality of the operatic voice. We can thus can sing any national repertoire, which makes us unique. If you find a vocal coach who can help you with this kind of music, it will make you very unique and highly competitive within the global opera industry.

‘I sometimes wish I could stay longer’, says Timur, ‘It would allow me to prepare this repertoire much more thoroughly. But there is nothing I can do: the official work is waiting for me in Italy’. An opportunity to stay back home longer and to benefit to the fullest from their self-generated reverse remittances was actually given to some of my informants in 2020, when the Covid-19 stroke the world. The pandemic caught them in different geographical places. Those who were at that moment in Italy had to interrupt their home visits. However, those who were within the post-Soviet space in March 2020 (the start of the pandemic) took the most of this opportunity and extended their informal training and the preparation of new repertoire. ‘In Russia, people did not really care about the quarantine. They did not go to work. But they did not interrupt their socialization either’, says Mlada, who was surviving the pandemic in Russia, ‘So I was seeing my tutor almost every day, and we had practiced so much stuff—both new and old. Never in my life have I had such a tremendous preparation!’ ‘When eventually I returned to Italy six months later’, adds Faina, ‘I was really very well prepared as an artist and ready to move forward. After the pandemic was over, I received a new offer from a very good theater in Europe’.

Their homeland transnationalism has thus become a wormhole to a stellar nursery of another, international, level. Given this, some informants confess ‘being picky when choosing a back-home place’. ‘It should be a place with a suitable opera-house, where you can be paired with qualified vocal partners, while also receiving good professional support’, says Stella. However, this extent of choice is available only to the informants who, like Stella, work with world best theaters and have the international reputation. The majority of my informants do not have this degree of flexibility in the management of their homeland gravity.

Nevertheless, all of them show a keen interest in giving voice lessons as a trial toward an alternative career route. By trying to teach back home, they also seek to imitate opera super-giants, who continuously increase their fandom and reputation through the circle of their students. Parallel to that, the informants confess enjoying to think that ‘teaching back home allows to do something meaningful for the homeland’. ‘Teaching with the soul’ or ‘singing with a soul’—that is, almost for free—allows them to think that they may be free to somehow structure their own life, to enjoy the illusion that not everything is controlled by agents and networks. Although they know this is not true.

6.4.3 Undesirable But Unavoidable

The informants further say that their returns to the post-Soviet space were not always desirable. These relocations were sometimes structured by institutions of power, especially if the singer was enrolled in a conservatory or a vocal academy in Italy or somewhere in Europe under the auspices of a presidential program. The governmental sponsorship of international education could require a certain prolonged period of home return and home residence in the country of origin on the part of the singer to pay off his/her ‘stellar nursery debt’. This was the case for the interviewed singers from southern republics, where the government had invested in the geopolitical project of raising the ‘local Maria Callas’ generation (the nationally sedentary transnational artistic elite) through international education or apprenticeship. ‘I was not able to stay in Italy after having completed my two-year vocal academy internship’, says one such informant, ‘I did not want to return home but I had no choice: the government had already paid a lot of money for my Italian education, had given my family back home a new house and social benefits, so I had no choice. Otherwise, my family would have lost everything’. Those informants found themselves extremely disappointed with the impact of their countries of origin upon their transnational career and elite status. As they now understand but in retrospect, geopolitics is, in fact, a tough business, which can tear a young star apart.

6.5 At the Epicenter of Geopolitics

6.5.1 Fallen Idols

When the Russian special operation only started in February 2022, the global community of opera producers and fans demanded that their idol Anna Netrebko should officially an anti-Russian statement. Netrebko’s immediate response in social media was:

Forcing artists to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right. This should be a free choice. Like many of my colleagues, I am not a political person. I am not an expert in politics. I am an artist (A. Netrebko, Facebook Public Post 26/02/2022).Footnote 1

In her powerful and very courageous speech, she initially chose to stay away from politics, without realizing that it would not be possible. She and her early career mentor Valeriy Gergiev had all their western contracts immediately terminated, including Netrebko’s contract with the Bavarian Opera in Munich and the New York Metropolitan Opera (Hernández, 2022). A few days later, she modified her statement. As a result, her global career was restored yet to the detriment of her perennial connections with Russia and its opera industry (Marshall & Hernández, 2023). The Russian mass media, which used to glorify the ‘operatic Cinderella’ story of Netrebko for years, are now literally crucifying her as the traitor of the nation and the public enemy (Esenina, 2022; Libgardt, 2022; Shilov, 2022; Smirnova, 2022; KP.RU, 2023). She has been consistently called, in various derogative ways, ‘a chameleon who changes her skin’ (Shilov, 2022) and ‘a swindler who tries to sit on two chairs’(Smirnova 2022).

Scholars of opera studies argue that in no epoch the space of opera was neutral while shaping world cultures (Hakobyan, 1998; Kotnik, 2010, 2016). It was always used as a political instrument to support the political regime both in the Soviet Union and in the post-Soviet Russia (Hakobyan, 1998; Panchuk, 2006; Kalinovsky, 2016). Opera was also widely used as an ideological weapon in the European geopolitics for years, inspiring people to stand for their nations or to oppose other nations (Kotnik, 2010, 2016). And today the world of global opera has thus turned into a battlefield, where since the start of the Russian military campaign in February 2022, global elite migrants have been literally torn apart between their desire to keep connections with Russia and the requirements of their western networks to denounce the Russian polity (Marshall & Hernández, 2023).

In this difficult geopolitical milieu, four of my informants, to whom I have recently talked about the current situation, complain about their inability to benefit from their habitual reverse remittances. The previously salient Russian operatic repertoire does not function anymore very effectively as their trans-galactic capital and as a wormhole to a better place. ‘Russian music is not welcomed anymore in Italy or America, who often boycott everything Russian out of political protest’, sadly confesses Klava, ‘This is really very sad because this music is very good’. ‘My agent now also requests that I modify the verbal message explaining the meaning of the musical piece and pretend that this is not Russian but Ukrainian music, which does not make any sense to me’, adds Ada, ‘So I prefer to keep it for better times’.

These informants also note the current difficulties in accessing their back-home mentors and tutors. Tutors in Russia with whom they were previously connected are now (post-2022) ‘reluctant to collaborate with foreigners from hostile western countries’. ‘It looks like my previous mentor is now afraid to help me’, says Mlada, ‘Of course, I understand everything and don’t take it personally’. She is, therefore, intent to seek transnational support in other post-Soviet spaces through the re-routing of her center of gravity. However, this transnational re-routing may be problematic too because other former Soviet states are also becoming out of reach. ‘I cannot go to Ukraine either because it is now a high-risk zone’, explains Mlada. ‘There can be alternative places with good vocal resources in Kazakhstan or Georgia’, notes Faina:

But the overall political situation in the former Soviet region is very intense now. The flight tickets are extremely expensive. So I am just not going anywhere near at the moment. Nevertheless, I will keep looking for options. And I do understand the position of Anna Netrebko when she responds to all these nasty mass media that she is “OK siting on two, or even three, chairs”. If no one cares about us, we, migrants, must take care of ourselves at this difficult moment of time and find an alternative gravitation.

6.5.2 ‘Sitting on Two Chairs’

The center of gravity, whose power my informants continuously perceive throughout their transnational work, is connected to what scholars of migration studies conceptualize as ‘return’, ‘home visits’ and ‘home transnationalism’. However, trajectories of return are often ‘complex’ and ‘re-routed’ (Serra Mingot & Mazzucato, 2019; Ahrens & King, 2023; Erdal et al., 2023). The ‘home space’ of a migrant can be, therefore, very polymorphous and fluid, which is illuminated by the stories of my informants. For them, the ‘back home’ space can be their native town, republic of origin or even another republic (or the whole post-Soviet region). These fluid perceptions and related practices often overlap and become interchangeable with time. Nevertheless, their ‘back-home’ spatiality is isomorphic: this space always has its configurations within the geography of the former Soviet bloc. Depending on their needs and external circumstances, their center of homeland gravity is very portable, yet within the parameters of this isomorphic architecture.

Their trajectories are, however, subjected to political pressures and, therefore, open-ended. The gravitation of their transnationalism can be responsive to crisis situations such as the global pandemic or the geopolitical conflict. The historical-sociological and interpretive-biographic analyses of my data altogether show that the informants’ center of homeland works only when it is part of their overall transnational exchange and historical, socio-economic and geopolitical positioning. Russia, Ukraine, Georgia or the post-Soviet region is meaningful for them as long as this place plays a role in their transnational employment. While the Covid-19 has not eventually changed their center of gravity and its effect was only temporary, the post-2022 geopolitics may actually re-route it substantially because the conditions of their transnational work are now changing dramatically.

Regardless of anything, the final return, or repatriation, is not an option for any of my informants. Within this complex geopolitical context, they shape therefore as mean (greedy for success) and lean (manipulative) career-seeking professionals who are trying hard to “sit on multiple chairs” because they are very vulnerable (Table 6.1).

Table 6.1 The history of Opera and its role on geopolitics
Full size table