How Covent Garden sabotaged opera’s peace lobby

On today’s Telegraph op-ed page I write about the harm inflicted by Covent Garden’s CEO Alex Beard on those seeking to end the war in Gaza.

Among other things, I argue:

…Beard’s sanction on Israeli Opera came within hours of 2,400 Israeli artists demanding their prime minister stop the war. The two leading signatories of that petition were Dan Ettinger, music director of Israeli Opera, and its artistic director Zach Granit. Beard’s decision was a slap in the face for the only stop-the-war campaign that has a hope in the Gaza hell of making any difference on the ground.

Israeli artists, lawyers, intellectuals, stagehands and retired generals oppose the continuation of this dreadful war with every fibre of their being. So do most Jewish friends of Israel. The nightly images of Gaza laid waste would move a stone to tears. So would the video of an emaciated Israeli hostage being forced to dig his own grave in a Gaza tunnel. That video was issued on the very day that Beard issued his tone-deaf Israel boycott. How hapless is that?

There will be consequences for Covent Garden….

Continues here.

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