Climate activists stood and screamed at the Met Opera’s opening night performance of Tannhauser in New York City on Thursday, and attendees were furious.
Extinction Rebellion NYC is a radical climate change group that claimed credit on social media for the protests and shared videos.
The second act saw several protesters calling for the end of fossil-fuels. A man, who was announcing the “climate crises” told the audience that they should “wake up.” He then unfurled a black banner with the words, “No opera on a dead planet. ”
He said, “Wake Up! The stream was polluted. It is contaminated. It is poisonous. This is a severe climate emergency.
1 #BREAKING – Rebels disrupted the Metropolitan Opera, warning that we need to #EndFossilFuels immediately to avoid a dead planet. #MetOpera #ClassicalMusic #COP2 [THREAD] pic.twitter.com/NTAKqUbzzf
— Extinction Rebellion NYC 🌎 (@XR_NYC) December 1, 2023
Extinction rebellion said that the first disruption would coincide with a line from an opera character.
The group said the disruption coincided with the character declaring on stage, “love is a spring you can drink.” The group also pointed out that, contrary to what the character said on stage, today’s springs are not clean due to the climate crisis and contaminated water.
The security led the activists out as the audience booed them. A second activist from Extinction Rebellion shouted a similar message, causing the performance to be stopped.
An angry audience shouted, “Shut up!” and asked the woman to leave. “Get out! ” “Go outside!” This is not where you should be! One person can be seen removing the scarf from a protester.
4 The government is telling us electric cars and solar panels will solve this problem but we know that’s not true. We need to all understand the scale of the catastrophe we’re facing. #Cop28 failure pic.twitter.com/inPcyMY0ta
— Extinction Rebellion NYC 🌎 (@XR_NYC) December 1, 2023
According to the New York Times, some show attendees left and questioned security.
According to The Met, the performance was stopped for 22 minutes and police were called to remove protesters.
“Our top priority was the safety of everyone on site.” The Met said the lights were set to 25% to discourage protests.
According to Extinction Rebellion, the disruption was intended to highlight that “climate changes and environmental crises threaten everything in our world including the opera.”
“This and similar actions are the response of a movement that has no other recourse; it must engage in unconventional forms of protest to bring mass attention to the greatest emergency of our time. All normal means of effecting change commensurate with the scale of the catastrophe – voting, petitioning, lobbying, etc. – have failed and failed again. Meanwhile, the science makes it clear that we have only a very small time window to end fossil fuel use and to halt carbon emissions,” the climate group said in a statement.
They claimed to love opera but “disrupt” the public as a “last resort” to “fight climate emergency”.
“We will not stop disrupting, because nature has just begun.” Jack Baldwin, the spokesperson for New York City said that “the orange skies and flooding are just the beginning.”
If XR doesn’t disrupt the climate it will. Violence. Activists disturb peacefully. Miles Grant said, “Nature is going to disrupt violently”.
