Monday Bulletin: A Concert of Remembrance and Hope

Monday, January 30, 2023
Partly cloudy. High 52 degrees.

Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events! Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to look.

The city broke the record on Sunday for the longest start to a winter without snow, according to the National Weather Service and the Wall Street Journal. “The 1973 winter had set the record, when it didn’t snow until Jan. 29. The agency’s snowfall records date to 1869.”

News
Remembrance
By Ann Cooper

When the first Russian rockets exploded in Kyiv, Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities last February, my phone lit up with anguished calls from friends and former colleagues. Most were from the community of former Moscow correspondents who, like myself, were angry, dismayed, frustrated, even unbelieving that the ever more authoritarian Vladimir Putin would launch a war against Ukraine based on a set of utter lies – and then make it a crime to call his “special military operation” a war.

Feeling helpless, we all fretted about what “to do” about the war. One friend founded a charity to get medical supplies and protective equipment like flak jackets into Ukraine. Another focused all her efforts on getting family and her best friend out of Kharkiv. A retired former Moscow correspondent went back to work for his former employer to aid in war coverage. I worked with one of my former employers, the Committee to Protect Journalists, to document the safety and press freedom crises for media in both Ukraine and Russia. One Ukrainian journalist I interviewed explained why he and others put down their pens to become soldiers. “It’s simple,” he said. “The scale of the invasion was such that the existence of Kyiv and the country as a whole was in doubt.” And: “Had Ukraine disappeared, journalism would have been meaningless.”

Nearly a year later, we all remain angry, dismayed and more frustrated than ever with no end in sight and limited options for something “to do” about the conflict. It’s easy to grow weary and to be cynical about the concerts, vigils, protests and other public events that Ukraine’s supporters continue to organize to remind us that the war drones on. Such events are not going to bring peace. But they are still an important way of sending a message to Ukraine: the war is not forgotten, nor are its victims, nor is Ukraine’s crucial role right now in the global struggle for democracy.

That’s the point of A Concert of Remembrance and Hope at the Metropolitan Opera, scheduled for February 24, 7 p.m. There will likely be many commemorations around the world that day, the anniversary of the start of the war. This one, on the Upper West Side, features the Met’s orchestra and chorus in two works: Mozart’s Requiem, honoring victims of the war; and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, symbolizing “hope” (the opening chords of the symphony were a symbol of Allied victory in World War II).

All tickets for A Concert of Remembrance and Hope are $50, and they go on sale this week, at noon February 1, at metopera.org.