Introduction: The New Strange World of Global Elite Migrants

Abstract

In 2002, the world was astonished by the appearance of the new opera star Anna Netrebko at the Salzburg Opera Festival. She was young, incredibly talented and smashingly glamorous, almost akin to the legendary Maria Callas. She quickly became the face of the world new opera and also the face of the new Russia and of the post-Soviet space. Like a speeding rocket, she was granted, in 2006, the Austrian citizenship as the soloist of the Vienna State Opera. In a jiff, she became an Austrian citizen, without having undergone long bureaucratic procedures of naturalization in a country with the most restrictive citizenship schemes.