Emilio Pons

09/03/2025

To save the institution that he has destroyed through his woke/DEI nonsense, Peter Gelb, the General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, has had the nerve to broker an agreement with SAUDI ARABIA to rescue the Met.

I cannot fathom a more blatant display of moral and ideological corruption!

This is the very same Peter Gelb who cancelled opera super star Anna Netrebko for the crime of not staunchly enough (for his taste) opposing Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, and recently forcing the hand of African-American tenor Larry Brownlee to cancel an upcoming concert in Moscow.

This is the very same Peter Gelb that has dedicated every single program since the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the people of the Ukraine, and organized a massive performance of the Verdi "Requiem" in their honor, yet has not issued a single statement in support of the Jewish people or Israel after October 7, 2023.

And finally, this is the very same Peter Gelb who temporarily cancelled German bass Rene Pape after Rene decried the vulgarity of the spectacle of the Metropolitan Opera's participation in the NYC gay pride parade.

I thought that the UN having had Saudi Arabia chair the commission on women's rights was the epitome of hypocrisy, but this reaches a brand new level of debased ideological prostitution.

Is the Met's darling gay countertenor Anthony Ruth Costanzo who paraded himself nearly naked on the Met’s pride bus going to volunteer to be thrown off the roofs of Saudi Arabia for the “crime” of being gay?

Is Joyce DiDonato going to all of a sudden defend “women’s rights” in one of the largest and strongest bastions of Medieval backwardness when it comes to the treatment of women?

Is "in your face" gender fluid mezzo Jamie Barton going to be “gender fluid” in Riyadh?

I could go on and on....

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!

The Met, which has withdrawn $120 million from its endowment since the pandemic, reached a lucrative deal to perform in Saudi Arabia for three weeks each winter.

11/06/2024

The USA defeated Marxism.

Best news of the decade!

Trump 2024!

Common sense prevailed!

08/31/2023

I have been saying this for YEARS, and I have been dismissed as a right-wing lunatic, demonized as a N**i (how predictably puerile!), and have been repeatedly asked by well meaning but ultimately spineless people to stop denouncing, for the sake of my career, the woke agenda of the American Useful Idiots for Cultural Marxism.

Perhaps now that all their treasured institutions are following the fate of their cherished democrat-run failing cities, they will finally concede that they have been wrong all along, and that engaging in self-censorship is not only cowardly but ultimately futile.

After all: what good is it to keep your mouth shut “for the sake of your professional career” if the outlets for said career disappear under the colossal failures to which policies based on woke “Diversity, Inclusion, Equity” (without merit and excellence!) ideas inevitably lead to?

In Philadelphia, one of the country’s most progressive arts companies is near collapse, a decline accelerated by its woke programming.

08/18/2023

https://edwardsvoice.wordpress.com/2023/08/16/the-metropolitan-opera-guild-may-be-dead-but-the-arts-are-not/

This is the pinnacle of the idiotic, virtue-signaling, race-pandering, woke narrative about the arts.

This sorry excuse of an educator took a swing at my post about the decline of opera and culture in the USA and of course, in typical lobotomized neo-Marxist style, decried my thoroughly justified rejection of vulgarity and equated it with —you guessed it— racism!

I guess this idiot would like to see Cardi AB’s “WET ASS PUSSY” enshrined as a great work of art just because … because … “diversity, inclusion, equity.”

What a joke!

DEFUND WOKE AMERICAN ACADEMIA!

The recent closure of the Metropolitan Opera Guild triggered comments on social media lamenting the death of the arts. This is without a doubt a sad development for opera in America. However, it is…

08/15/2023

The spineless and opportunistic American singers who partake in the dumbing down of high culture in order to “go with the flow” and “be nice” only to then complain about the USA’s dire state of affairs in the arts, and who dream about moving to Germany to profit from our handsomely state supported theater system are like the democrat voters who flee the chaos of CA and NY and move to TX and FL only to vote democrat again.

The recent collapse of the Met opera guild is not due to “elitism.” The notion that opera is “elitist” in the way in which this term is understood by the common folk, i. e. as something which is beyond their financial reach (like a private yacht), is preposterous. The most expensive tickets to the opera pale by comparison to the cost of a Taylor Swift or Rihanna concert; they are even a fraction of what it costs to attend a concert by those two uncouth women who represent the epitome of vulgarity, namely, CardiB and Lizzo. In fact, the tickets to some new musicals are higher than the most expensive Met tickets. This notion of financial “elitism” needs to die once and for all. Opera is not financially inaccessible.

The true demise of opera and high culture in the USA is the widespread distrust and disrepute of *intellectual* elitism. The deeply ingrained culturally-Marxist push for equality that is so popular in the USA, particularly amongst dumb and impressionable Americans (millennials and genZs) has come to mean that everyone needs to be equally ignorant and dumb in order for the lazy and stupid masses not to feel excluded. Politicians, academics, corporations and the media have been pandering to the lowest common denominator for decades — and now the country is in utter cultural disrepair.

Until people who are involved in the arts grow a pair and learn to be unapologetic about the fact that the arts require that people better themselves to be in a position to appreciate them, even if that means coming to terms with the fact that cultivated people are better than others, the race to the bottom will continue to accelerate.

06/18/2023

Classical music in the USA has been in steady decline amidst the rapid rise, and nearly complete dominance of popular culture (and at that, particularly of its most vulgar iterations).

The classical music scene never recovered from the 2008 financial meltdown. Then came the pandemic. As though that combination of factors wasn’t nefarious enough, over the last years we have seen the rise of the power-thirsty, self-aggrandizing, self-congratulatory, virtue-signaling, leftofascist “woke” mob, and of so-called “cancel culture.”

The American zealous acolytes of this secular cult fancy that they are “purging classical music from racism, misogyny, homophobia, and —of course— transphobia”, but what they are actually doing is precipitating its demise.

If you are going to read ONE article today (and you should read plenty more than that), then please let it be this excellent piece written by the formidable Heather Mac Donald:

The crusade against ‘whiteness’ is destroying culture.

05/28/2023

Attention, NYC-based singers: don't miss this opportunity to work with renowned vocal coach, harpsichordist, and conductor, Tim Ribchester.

Masterclass: Mozart styleTim Ribchester, conductor, vocal coach & Emilio Pons, tenor June 15, 2023 The Brownstone–Haus der Musik461 W 143rd St New York NY 100312:30 PM - 7:00 PM Tim Ribchester is a Denver-born, Edinburgh-raised, and Berlin-based conductor, harpsichordist and vocal coach, currentl...

04/11/2023

My thoughts precisely! And they apply not only to Chicago:

Yes, there have been and occasionally still are worthy opera nights to be had. But, as long-suffering local aficionados recognize, these are few and far between.

03/02/2023

As co-founder of the Sankt Goar International Music Festival and Academy, I organized and sat through hundreds of auditions between 2014 and 2019. I had the opportunity to hear “from the horse’s mouth” —the multiple casting and artistic directors that we invited— what it is that they are looking for. Their expectations, and what the singers who auditioned thought they expected, hardly ever coincided.

In an effort to bridge this gap and further the careers of emerging and professional singers based in the USA, I am now continuing in New York City with the mission we had in Germany.

I strongly encourage singers to join this upcoming masterclass and round table with Boris Ignatov, casting director of the Staatstheater in Stuttgart, Germany, on Sunday, March 19, 2023. He is extremely knowledgeable and experienced, yet one of the friendliest, most down to earth and helpful people in our industry.

Masterclass and Round Table Auditioning and Performing in Europe as an AmericanSunday, March 19th, 2023 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM121 W. 20th St. PH5G,New York, NY 10011Special guest:Boris Ignatov, casting director Staatstheater Stuttgart Boris Ignatov is casting director at the prestigious Staatstheater S...

11/02/2022

Our production of "The Rake's Progress" at Bellas Artes made international headlines, and is currently on the "spotlight" of Opera Culture News:

The world's leading international opera news and magazine company that provides in-depth and behind-the-scenes looks into the industry and the culture it embodies.

10/22/2022

My interview for “MILENIO”:

El tenor Emilio Pons habla sobre su debut protagónico en Bellas Artes con 'La carrera de un libertino', de Igor Stravinsky.