4.1 Introduction: Thinking Metaphorically

‘I cannot live without opera: I always wanted to be an opera star, like Maria Callas or Anna Netrebko, to sing in best theaters and to live in different countries’. This is the de jour statement that I have heard from all my informants. All of them admit longing since childhood to become a global opera star, thus creating the narrative aura of mysticism and magic around their (pre)adolescent ‘elite career desire’. Such statements as ‘I knew I was destined to be an international opera star’ and ‘I always had a gut feeling it was my destiny to sing on best world opera stages’ provoke me to explore how trajectories of their elite migrant networking interact with the flow of their ‘starry’ artistic careers.

To introduce the reader to the reality and ethnomethodological details of transnational opera career as an unexploited terra of socio-anthropological knowledge (Kotnik, 2010, 2016), this chapter continues the interpretive sociological line of thinking that was initiated in the previous chapter. In this chapter, I elaborate nuances of the metaphorical imagination underpinning the rhetoric of my research. Through my interview data and theoretical resources borrowed from the academic areas of migrant agency and astronomy, I compare the work of migrant agency with a cosmic navigation, or ‘astrogation’. I sociologically imagine the career of international opera singer (archetype of global elite migrant) as the life cycle of a celestial body. I elaborate the main components of the suggested interpretive-metaphorical framework of ‘astrogation’, namely: ‘galaxy’, ‘stellar nursery’, ‘black hole’ and ‘star formation’ (with the ‘galaxy’ metaphor standing for ‘elite network’).

Starting with the natal point of my informants’ career dreams, this chapter illuminates through what stages their aspirations and professional skills were shaping. I show how they were envisioning and preparing for their migration and network membership with the purpose to become a ‘star’ and not yet knowing whether they would shine or fell down from the global opera sky. The chapter aims to provide a brief overview of the spatiality of the global opera industry in its relation to migrant agency and its work through the career life cycle of my informants on their way toward the global elite migration.

4.2 The Life Cycle of a Global Elite Migrant

4.2.1 Opera Education at Origin

In 2014, the global opera world exploded at the appearance of the twenty-year old Maria Mudryak from Kazakhstan, who was singing her debut role at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genova (Suleimenova, 2017). Opera lovers soon were even more fascinated by the glamorous story of her early career rise. She, in fact, became known to the world as a prodigy child, who had shown the first signs of musical talent at the age of three and recorded her first professional compact disk at the age of six (Angald, 2020). It was actually her mother who immediately reacted to this spark of talent and started supporting the daughter’s participation in various vocal concourses locally, nationally and internationally. As an example of minor-age elite migrant, the ten-year-old Maria moved, together with her mother, to Italy to study vocal art at an elite musical school in Milan (ibid). At the age of fourteen, she was already admitted to the Conservatory of Milan, from which she graduated at the age of eighteen, rapidly progressing in her starry career and practically living between Italy and Kazakhstan, her two homes (Suleimenova, 2017).

Prior to that, the Soviet adolescent Anna Netrebko, who had been singing in the local children’s chorus and impressing everyone with her voluminous voice in her native town of Krasnodar (in Russia) , moved to Leningrad (soon to be St Petersburg) in 1988 to study vocal art at college and then conservatory (Woman Hit, 2009; KP.RU, 2023). In all her interviews, the operatic diva Netrebko says that, though singing since childhood, she started to think about herself as a future opera singer only at the age of seventeen (ibid). However, her ‘global elite migrant’ story began years later, after her first international success at the 2002 Salzburg Opera Festival and her consequent perennial reign in the global opera industry (ibid).

These two extra-polar cases of elite career initiation and global elite migration point to a continuum of decision-making of aspiring opera singers from the former Soviet bloc. To be honest, none of my informants shares the ‘prodigy child’ trajectory of Maria Mudryak. The majority of them were positioned closer to Anna Netrebko at their early career start: they all studied music from childhood and developed a specific interest in opera in their middle teen years, preceding high school graduation at origin.

It is not by chance that the seventeen-year old Anna Netrebko travelled through almost half of the Soviet Russia in 1988 to be enrolled in the music college in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and to transfer soon to the St Petersburg conservatory. It is not surprising either that years later, the mother of Maria Mudryak wanted her daughter to receive education specifically in Milan, in a famous specialized music school and in a world famous conservatory. Ambitious musicians must target the most elite places of music training (the loci of elite networking) and even plan such routes in detail and in advance (Shepard, 2010; Petersen, 2017) because agentic planning is a key element of network building (Triandafyllidou, 2018). In this connection, it is important to explain how the opera education is basically structured within the post-Soviet space, where my informants started to make their first professional and pre-migratory steps and their first—often immature—attempts to enter operatic networks.

The system of Soviet music education (in which Anna Netrebko received her first professional training) and its post-Soviet format (from which all my informants have benefited) are represented by four main steps, as described by Nikolaev and Sukhanov (2012). The first step is music school, offering a seven-year course of studies in basic music education. Such basic music schools can be found in any town within the post-Soviet space, and their matriculation does not bear a competitive stance: children are normally accepted on their parents’ ability to pay the tuition fees. On the second level, we can see the music college, offering a four-year professional training in music for mid-level professionals such as music school teachers or local chorus conductors. The majority of mid-size cities within the post-Soviet bloc have at least one such college, with enrolment normally open to all music school graduates.

The third mode of music education is the ‘special’, or conservatory-affiliated, music school with eleven years of education for most gifted children to become top-level musicians (ibid). In structural terms, this format may look like a merger of the former two formats of the pre-conservatory education: school plus college. However, it is, in fact, a more complex and elitist structure. Such ‘special’ music school are located in major and capital cities (one per city) and have extremely competitive application procedures, with intense rounds of screening for pre-selected candidates. Leading directly to the conservatory entrance, such schools bear the status of elite places of music education and training.

Finally, there is the fourth and final stage—conservatory, with its five years of music training, leading to higher qualifications in music (Nikolaev & Sukhanov, 2012). Above that, each conservatory in the post-Soviet space also offers postgraduate education including doctoral programs (with the degree of Kandidat Nauk in Music) and various internships and apprenticeships. It is important to note that professional opera education is offered only in conservatories, the majority of which require the pre-requisites of music school- and sometimes music college- education as well as the skills of playing the piano and understanding the basics of music theory (ibid). Within the post-Soviet operatic space, the most prestigious conservatories are Moscow State Conservatory named after Peotr Chaikovsky, Gnessin Academy (both based in Moscow) and St Petersburg Conservatory in Russia as well as conservatories based in capital cities of such former Soviet republics as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Baltic States (Barcalaya, 2021). In addition, there are also high-rank conservatories in a number of other (mid-size) Russian cities such as Novosibirsk or Kazan. However, the center of the elite post-Soviet opera production is associated specifically with Moscow, St Petersburg and former Soviet capital cities (ibid). Within the (former) socialist bloc, opera education has always been elitist, carefully gate-kept by the most influential musicians and, therefore, not widely accessible to the general public (Polyakova, 1971; Hakobyan, 1998; Golomstock, 1994; Panchuk, 2006; Frolova-Walker & Walker, 2012; Kotnik, 2016).

4.2.2 Newborn Stars: Early Migrant Agency, or Cloudy Networks

Given its ‘dreamy’ and ‘fairy-tale’ nature, the operatic profession appeared and continues to appear mysterious to many (post)socialist people (Kotnik, 2010, 2016). Its logistics remains invisible to the public eye (ibid). As noted by one of my informants, ‘Everyone in my high school knew how to prepare for the university entrance if you wanted to study, for example, economics or engineering. But it was absolutely unclear what you needed to do if you wanted to become a top-level singer’. Informants also add that it was even more difficult to understand how people could build operatic networks and become international musicians compared with the internationalization of and transnationalism in other professional domains. As noted by Zoe, whose parents were mid-size business owners and relatively well-to-do people:

I was attending a good high school, and some of my class fellows knew very well that they would like to become internationally active business people or lawyers. It was clear to everyone how such education was achieved. They knew where they would study, where they would have their first internships and how it would lead them to Europe eventually. And such calculations proved to be correct. On the contrary, neither my parents nor myself had known how and where I should study after school to become an opera singer who could sing abroad.

The majority of my informants note that their ‘young’ years, before they enrolled in a conservatory, were professionally unstable and marked by varied choice. While continuously loving classic music and sustaining for years their passion for opera, they were still uncertain about their future profession:

I remember that I always loved music and enjoyed playing the piano. I remember loving opera since the age of maybe ten and wanting to become a singer. At the same time, I could also think of becoming a lawyer like my dad, or an engineer because I also used to love physics. I knew that I would become a singer one day. But I did not know when precisely. I guess that at the age of fifteen or sixteen, it was a little bit foggy in my head. The idea of the opera career was a bit foggy. My parents were questioning my choice, what I would do with my opera and how I would be able to survive. So I had a very foggy picture about my future plans, while my passions for music was increasing. It was there – but I was not sure what I should do with it and how. Needless to say that I had absolutely no idea of what I would be doing as a migrant in another country.

The reported ‘unclarity’—or ‘fogginess’—of their decision-making at that time leads me to compare those pre-conservatory years with what astronomers call the ‘nebula’ phase in the life cycle of celestial stars (Hawking & Penrose, 1996). The stars that we see in the night sky undergo several distinct phases in their formation: ‘nebula’ (or ‘cloud’), ‘baby-star’ (or ‘protostar’), ‘young star’, ‘red dwarf’, ‘giant’, and ‘white dwarf’ (Binney & Merrifield, 1998; Belkora, 2003). These are the main phases of star formation that deserve specific attention as they help to visualize my informants’ migration trajectories and career development.

In terms of elite career development and migrant agency, the pre-conservatory years of my informants can be conceptualized as what astronomers call the ‘nebula’ phase, which is an amorphous and foggy cloud with a potential to develop into a celestial star (Paul, 1993; Mo et al., 2010; Merritt, 2013). Between the moment of the informants’ first encounter with opera and their formal enrolment in a conservatory, they were slowly shaping as singers and migrants, living as if in a nebula, or ‘as if in a cloud’: their professional and migratory choices and decision making remained very ambivalent and unstable. All of them studied music in a music school, playing a specific instrument such as piano, flute or violin since the age of five or six and showing signs of musical talent. Then between the age of ten and fifteen, they were introduced specifically to the world of opera through their first visit to a local opera house. In music families, where both parents were professional musicians with at least one of them affiliated to opera, the informant’s interest in opera singing might appear even earlier—at the age of five.

The duration of this phase varied. In sociological terms, the nebula phase can be understood as the phase of finding oneself (Jacobs et al., 1991; Burnett & Thomas, 2010), which could finish at the age of seventeen for some informants, followed by their enrolment in a conservatory immediately after graduation from high school. While for others, the nebula self-search could last until the age of twenty-five, if conservatory was their second education. This phase was enacted in several scenarios, depending on the family background. Given the minor age of the informants during the ‘nebula’ years, their decision-making was largely affected by their family members.

The informants who were born in elite musical families and whose both parents were leading musicians showed an early life interest in music and opera, much earlier than the other informants—already at the age of three or four. They received the basic music education in an elite music school, which was often affiliated to a conservatory. In conservatories, they were initially specializing in instrumental music, followed by a transfer to the vocal department. The reason for their postponing of vocal education was that their parents considered the art of opera a less privileged professional domain than instrumental music. They advised their children to receive a more pragmatic profession such as pianist or violinist, which they considered more reliable compared to the fragility of human voice as an instrument used by opera singers. Their conservatory education was received at origin and with best tutors, followed by best networking at origin and/or Europe. As recalled by Timur:

I was playing the piano since the age of four because my both parents were musicians who had been always playing the piano. They were very mobile, travelling all over the country – the big Soviet Union at that time. It was my mom who was my first piano teacher. As long as I remember myself, I have been playing the piano. When I was ten, I visited the opera house for the first time in my life: they were showing La Boheme. And this is when I fell in love with opera and decided that I would like to sing like Rudolfo (the role performed by tenor). Sime time around fourteen, I knew that I would like to be a tenor. But my parents explained to me that my voice was too ‘young’ and too fragile to invest in it and that I needed to continue with my musical education as a pianist. So I decided to enroll in the conservatory as a pianist. I thought that if my voice would not have developed with time to enable me to become a singer, I would be a professional pianist, which was also very good because I liked music and because there was always a lot of work for pianists. However, if I decided to switch to the singer profession with time, the skill of playing the piano would be always desired for a singer. My parents made sure that in the conservatory I would have the best teachers in every subject so it would be easier for me to figure out what I would like to do. In fact, I was tutored by one of the best people, who eventually advised me to transfer to the vocal department.

Informants like Timur seemingly had pre-determined career routes: elite music school, conservatory at origin, and vocal academy or first job in Europe with the help of an agent who happened to be a family friend. They saw no need for secondary education because they felt well protected and well-networked within their dynastic world of music on the transnational level. As noted by Elagin (2002), the children of dynastic musicians, are always better positioned and protected in the world of music.

These trajectories differ from the career paths of the informants who come from non-musical families or ordinary musicians’ families. Their parents were tertiary-educated engineers and/or teachers, or local musicians such as local music school teachers (musicians of lower level). The ‘nebula’ phase of such informants could follow one of the following two scenarios. The first scenario was based on a rather careless and naïve attitude toward the opera profession in their non-expert families. This generally resonates with the situation when children choose an occupation different from the profession of their parents and the parents are unaware about the chosen domain (Ashby & Schoon, 2010). The parents of such informants might not even think about how difficult it could be for their child to become an international opera singer. These informants admit that they were inspired as teenagers by the living example of Anna Netrebko and her spontaneous decision-making. As Ariadna recalls:

My parents said, “OK, you think you are talented, it means that you are talented. Go ahead and matriculate in a conservatory in our town or some other town nearby. Your talent will be noticed and rewarded.” I applied to the local conservatory, graduated form it five years later, struggled with finding a good job, and my talent was not rewarded. Although I later migrated to Italy and tried to make the career in opera there, my talent was not rewarded. When I compare myself with other foreign singers in Italy, I think that somewhere in my childhood there was a mistake with that choice. I should have done something differently.

The parents like those of Ariadna had no knowledge about details of their child’s career trajectory. The children normally enrolled in local conservatories and had serious relational problems with orientation and choice-making in both opera and global migrations.

Another scenario was based on the parental and overall public mistrust to the seriousness of the operatic profession. Generally speaking, the operatic profession was not considered a reliable and pragmatic occupation in the Soviet Union (Hakobyan, 1998; Elagin, 2002), where the my informants’ parents had grown up and come of age. ‘My very traditional Soviet parents were kind of skeptical about my decision to enroll in the conservatory right after graduation from high school’, says Saveliy, ‘They were both doctors, and they were both very skeptical’:

They tried to persuade me toward becoming a doctor like themselves or toward a degree in law. However, my dad finally said, “This is your life, OK, go ahead and try. I don’t know. Maybe it will be easier than I am predicting. Maybe I am wrong with all my fears”. I applied to the conservatory, graduated from it and…as the life has shown, he was not wrong: it wasn’t easier than he predicted. On the contrary. I should have listened to him and tried something else first, to make a good base for myself.

Such doubting parents (like Saveliy’s father) were persuading the informants to keep opera as a passion that should become a lifetime hobby, while choosing a more practical occupation. However, the parental pressure was rather soft, and often the informant decided to take the risk of committing oneself to opera, without realizing how difficult it would be.

More pragmatic decision-making took place in elite business families, where both parents of the informant were affiliated with entrepreneurship but not with music. On the one hand, the parents knew very little about the opera industry and specificity of its networks although they knew a lot about the importance and nuances of business networks in general. They honestly admitted their own inability to advise their children on conservatory programs or migratory routes. On the other hand, such parents did not discourage the informants from pursuing the opera profession either because they seriously believed that their money would eventually open many doors at origin and abroad or because they were confident about teaching their child some universal rules of networking.

The informants who received their first operatic education in Italy were from such families. For example, Vanda, whose parents were wealthy businesspeople, generously sponsored her operatic education in an Italian conservatory. As Vanda herself admits, ‘I honestly thought that my parents’ money would open all doors for me in Europe. But, in fact, it was not enough. I also needed to make connections, which I did not know how to do in the world of music. No one explained to me at that point how the music industry operates. I knew something but not everything’. As we can see from her testimony, her parents provided her as a teenager with tangible resources for migration, including the generous monetary support and some tips on socializing with business-minded people. In fact, wealthy families often sponsor their children’s education abroad both financially and emotionally because they know what it means to have ambitious projects (Mazzucato, 2011; Erdal et al., 2023). However it is not always enough for further labor market integration in a specific professional niche (Isaakyan et al., 2022) because successful employment et destination depends on many other factors and its scenarios can be unpredictable (Ahrens & King, 2023).

There are also informants who come from elite ‘music-business’ families, where one parent, usually the father, is a powerful businessman, lawyer or doctor with entrepreneurial skills and specific clientele—while the other parent, usually the mother, is a high-level musician (as illuminated by the story of Rurick, which will be analyzed later in this book). As a decision-making parental couple, they congruently understood the dependence of opera on financial investments and business connections while also recognizing the importance of elite education and membership in transnational musicians’ networks. They could be also familiar with specifics of migratory trajectories in the opera industry through the network of their colleagues and clients. Such parents are aware that the opera industry is a specific kind of business, which is different from other businesses, and that it requires the accumulation of very specific forms of human capital, which are not found in other businesses.

Like the parents who were modest local businessmen, they encouraged their kids to receive the first—more practical—education with degree in business, law or financing in elite home universities in order to use it as the first resource for further operatic career abroad and to learn the basics of communication and networking important in business but also in the world of music. Those parents could provide the maximum support for their children’s future migration, in terms of financially sponsoring their educational and migratory project, preparing the child for potential challenges of migration and also providing some professional advice. Thus from the very beginning, such informants were provided a diversity of resources from their home community to enable their prospective migrant agency and network-building. This proves that migration decisions should involve ‘relational decision-making processes evolving over time’ (Erdal et al., 2023: 23; Thompson, 2017; Zhang, 2018).

The majority of my informants come from non-musical or elite business families. Nevertheless, all informants attended the music school between the age of six and fifteen, playing the piano and sometimes another instrument such as the flute or the violin, and receiving basic knowledge of music theory. The decision to go to music school was solely shaped by their parents for the following reasons. Some parents wanted their children to be musically educated and generally enlightened, and to develop a strong music skill as a potential and exquisite life-time hobby. Others sought to occupy their children with something beautiful that would keep them busy and, therefore, distracted from the evils of their low-class neighborhood. They also wanted their children to finalize something important that they themselves had not been able to finish such as playing the piano or singing in a beautiful voice for friends. Only the parents who were elite musicians themselves and insiders to opera networks openly encouraged their children to pursue the operatic profession on the international level because they were sure that they could provide their children, on a long-term basis, with necessary resource for both elite career and elite migration.

The talent for singing could sparkle when the informant was singing in the chorus or doing the music school homework. The skill was noticed by a music teacher and reported to the parents with the recommendation for additional tutorials in singing. My informants did benefit from private tutoring in basic vocal technique as adolescents while preparing for conservatories. Some informants who graduated from an ordinary music school (not a specialized elite school) at the age of fourteen or fifteen were still attending the general high school, during the last years of which they continued to take private music lessons including voice lessons to sustain their basic proficiency in music. This was encouraged and sponsored by their parents, all of whom were university-educated and, therefore, appreciative of the high moral and aesthetic (although not economic) value of classic music. As scholars of arts note, the aesthetic value of classic music and opera was very strong among tertiary educated people in the former communist bloc, even in spite of the public mistrust in the pragmatism of musician’s profession (Hakobyan, 1998; Kotnik, 2010, 2016). Although not all of such parents recognized its career-building potential for their children. Some parents clearly saw the intersection of paths between high-skill transnationalism and opera. They, therefore, advised their children on accumulating resources for each of these spheres differently, specifically by investing in additional (outside the opera domain) occupations as routes toward transnational networking.

The informants’ decision to choose opera as their profession was fostered by certain critical events in their lives—the events that interpretive biographers define as ‘turning points’ (Denzin, 2014; Isaakyan et al., 2022). Those events were crucial in cases when the informants or their parents were uncertain about the operatic career. For example, some informants from non-musical families made a successful singing performance at a music school competition or city’s youth festival and received a special prize. In such cases, the parents started to reconsider the career potential of opera for their children—or, as Ahrens and King (2023) note, ‘to re-route’ the children’s decision-making.

In some other cases, an expert or evaluator from a musical college could hear the informant singing in a chorus or ensemble and make advice to the parents. Private tutors also became facilitators of such decisions.

Some of my informants recall their first real-life encounter with opera when they attended a guest-star performance in their local opera house:

After that I kept telling my parents that I wanted to be an opera singer. Then I found some information on the Internet that those singers were later invited to sing abroad. And then I read about the career of Netrebko and other stars. I was telling these stories to my parents for the whole year until they agreed to arrange my auditioning with a voice teacher from our local conservatory. She said that I had a talent and persuaded my parents to invest in my vocal education. They believed her.

Some of my informants were persuaded by their parents to place their ‘singing’ on-hold as a future occupational option and to invest primarily in a degree in business, economics, law or informational technology. In such cases, the career switch was provoked by such a turning point as a historical event or personal drama (Isaakyan et al., 2022). Thus Pafnutiy, who comes from a musicians’ dynasty in Ukraine, was persuaded by his parents to receive his first education in drama and television business. He wanted to be an artist. Generally supportive of his desire, his parents, nevertheless, had serious doubts about the reliability of singer’s career. They believed that acting, screenwriting or movie-making would be a more pragmatic occupation given various sponsorship programs and grants for the television industry and the expanding soap opera franchise in Eastern Europe. However, the annexation of Crimea to Russia in 2014 and the increased mundane mobilization in Ukraine made his family change this decision. He was twenty-one when he was completing his final year at the university. Everyone knew that he was to be enlisted right upon graduation before he could even start his film-making career in Ukraine. Therefore, his father suddenly advised him on applying to an Italian conservatory to study opera singing, ‘to keep distance from the local events back home’. As noted by Pafnutiy:

One day my dad said to me: “You always wanted to be a singer, and now it is the right time for you to revive your dream. Now everything has suddenly changed, and opera seems more reliable to me because it will save your life.” Honestly, I never expected this to happen.

Another example is Natasha. Coming from the engineers’ family, she wanted to become an opera singer at school but was advised by her parents to study computer science first. She confesses being loyal to her childhood dream for a long time and staying in correspondence with leading Russian conservatories as potential places of her second education. While at the university she was taking private voice lessons and working on her technique all the time in the evenings. She even participated in various national vocal competitions and was noticed by an influential musician who invited her to apply for their conservatory. However, at a certain point in her life, she ‘became engaged with a nice guy, forgetting about opera for some time’. It was their sudden and very painful breakup that rekindled her idea to move to another city and to enroll in a conservatory there:

For quite some time, we were living together very happily, and all I was dreaming about was to have a family with him, to raise our children together. Now it sounds really weird but at that point I seemed to have forgotten about opera. Then he suddenly told me that he did not love me anymore and that he had met another woman and they were expecting a baby. I was shocked. All I wanted was to escape and to start a new life without him and away from him.

4.2.3 Conservatory and After

Natasha resigned from her lucrative engineering job and moved to another city, where she had relatives. She worked there for a few years in a business firm as a secretary while also taking evening classes at the conservatory. And then, having saved some money from her job, she moved to Italy to study opera in a vocal academy as her post-graduate education.

The conservatory education (which Natasha received much later than my other informants) was a new phase, the phase of trial and error. It was the ‘capital accumulation’ phase, during which she and my other informants were supposed to master the art of opera singing on the professional level and to develop basic networking for career and international migration. ‘In the conservatory, I started to feel like a little star, not the real star yet but like a future star’. The ‘baby star’ phase is understood by astronomers as a period during which the star is beginning to be born (Dickinson, 2004). The birth of a star is, however, a rather long process. Some of my informants were based in their countries of origin during this phase (like Natasha), while others received their conservatory education from Italian conservatories (like Vanda). The (pre)migratory reality of this phase was, therefore, different, depending on their geographical location. However, all of them started to think about their relocation to Italy from the very beginning of this phase.

The post-conservatory period can be metaphorically compared with what astronomers define as the ‘young star’ phase (Prialnik, 2000; Smith, 2004), during which the informants already knew how to sing professionally but still found it hard to always maintain the right professional equilibrium in singing and especially in transnational networking: ‘I didn’t know with whom and how I should be friends’.

The main features of this ‘pre-career’ period were participation in international competitions, looking for an influential sponsor/patron, finalization of migration decisions such as legal status in a new country, initiation of transnational employment (first probes), and search for an agent. During this period, the informants might not yet have an agent at all or a long-term agent. If the ‘nebula-’ and ‘baby-star’ phases are respectively connected to the informants’ pre-conservatory and conservatory experiences, the ‘young star’ phase is the phase of their first independent professional steps, specifically linked to their first attempts of transnational networking. It is a phase of participating in international vocal concourses and enrolling in additional operatic education such as vocal academy on the post-graduate level. This phase is mostly connected to Italy, where these events were taking place.

Comparing their professional development during these phases, we can see the following interesting differences. In the language of astronomy, the real—or mature—star is called the ‘main sequence star’ (Van den Bergh, 1998; Stahler & Palla, 2004), which is equivalent to the professional status that my informants call ‘being in-career’ in their professional slang (as translated from the Italian ‘essere en carriera’). To be in-career (or to be a professional opera singer wanted by various theaters and their networks), the person must know how to sing in ‘a good operatic voice’, which is a difficult art requiring a lot of technique (Harrington, 2020). In sociological thinking, this process can be compared with the production of helium out of hydrogen in star formation. A ‘main sequence star’ must fuse hydrogen atoms to form helium atoms as its core, and this production must be stable (Smith, 2004; Mo et al., 2010). This is what keeps the star luminous (ibid).

On analogy, the artist’s natural voice [which I compare with atoms of hydrogen] should be transformed into the professional operatic singing of high quality [equivalent to helium] through a variety of vocal techniques that the artist masters via formal or informal training (Harrington, 2020). In astronomy, the ‘baby star’ is a small celestial body that cannot yet produce helium on its own (Binney & Merrifield, 1998): the ‘baby star’ still gathers most of resources from its parental molecular cloud (Belkora, 2003), like a conservatory student who invariably needs a good tutor, as noted by all my informants. However, a conservatory graduate should already know how to sing professionally and how to manage the production of his/her voice as well as how to initiate first professional contacts in the international level (Harrington, 2020; Shepard, 2010). However, s/he may still feel very insecure professionally, as all my informants confess. In this respect, the conservatory graduate resembles a celestial ‘young star’, which is characterized by ‘erratic changes in brightness’ because it is still very unstable in the hydrogen-helium conversion (Merritt, 2013).

Given this, ‘young artists’, or ‘young stars’, are in need of further professional training and support, especially if they are oriented towards global elite migrations (Harrington, 2020; Shepard, 2010). They must target enrolment in post-conservatory training programs in best theaters and participation in international concourses to test their level of operatic voice [or ‘helium’] production and early professional socialization, as my interviews further illuminate. This task is especially challenging when added by the difficulties of migration and relocation to another country. If the ‘nebula’ and ‘protostar’ -phases of my informants were fully or partially preceding their migration, the ‘young star’ stage was actually the early migration stage for all of them. For some informants, it was their first step in their migration project, while for others (who had shaped as ‘baby stars’ in Italian conservatories), it was the second step, still a long way to go. However, the success of their further ‘elite migrant’ trajectories did not depend on this timing: it was grounded in the interplay of factors interfering with their agency, such as their ability to network (which will be discussed later in the book). Nevertheless, it was already the beginning of their migration, of their relocation overseas.

As the testimonies of my informants illuminate, the borderline between being a ‘baby star’ (conservatory student) and a ‘young star’ (concourse participant) was very blurred. Some have managed to participate in a prestigious vocal competition and to find a good agent already in a conservatory. While others were struggling with the agent search and also with integration and legalization at destination even during the first post-conservatory years. The ‘young star’ phase was the period when the informants were enrolling in vocal academies or post-graduate studies in Italy and trying to make their first job contracts. To a certain extent, this phase became a point of no return: during the next phases, the informants were turning into either ‘failed stars’ (forever dropping from the global elite migration stream) or ‘rising stars’, who progressed in their global elite migration trajectories, although with different degrees of success.

The informants who became more successful singers view themselves as ‘being in-career’, which resonates with the notion of the ‘main sequence star’ in astronomy. The career success can be further viewed by them as ‘modest’ (the status of ‘modest star’, or ‘mediocre star’) or ‘gigantic’ (the status of ‘operatic giant’ and ‘supergiant’), as they themselves say in resonance with the rhetoric of astronomy. ‘My career has been quite modest, compared with a more gigantic rise of more famous people or even of people with whom I studied’, admits Glasha, ‘But I am still in-career – that is, still in demand – which is the most important part’.

The modest (mediocre) stars like Glasha can be compared to the celestial ‘red dwarfs’, who dominate the universe and shine for the longest time, though not as bright as other—gigantic—stars). ‘It may not be what I was dreaming about in high school. Of course, I did not want to become such a tiny figure in the global opera universe’, as Glasha explains, ‘But I am still in demand globally. Not in the La Scala – but some world theaters still need me all the time’. The informants such as Glasha sing in Tier 3 and 4 theaters—‘not the stellar – still it is a plentiful job market’.

The ‘giant’ phase, that some of my informants have managed to achieve, is associated with high-fly career and consistent employment in Tier 2–3 and sometimes Tier 1 all over the world. In our sky, there are stars that are ‘super giants’, to whom such famous divas as Anna Netrebko (from Russia), Sonya Yoncheva (from Bulgaria), Marina Rebekka (from Latvia), Pretty Yende (from South Africa), Nadine Sierra (from the USA) or Erwin Schrott (from Uruguay) can be compared because they sing exclusively in Tier-1 opera houses. The majority of my informants are either ‘modest stars’ or ‘giants’. There are no super-giants among them. However, the informants share their transnational network (including patrons, mentors and agents) with these super-giants and even benefit from their networking resources.

4.2.4 Main Sequence

Naïve ‘nebulas’, determined but still confused ‘baby-stars’ and ‘young stars’, then ‘in-career stars’ who may be modest or even more than modest…What happens next? There are different scenarios for a star to fade, as astronomers argue. Super-giants explode suddenly and become supernovae, leaving a lot of luminosity behind themselves and a lot of space for new stars to appear (Wheeler, 2007; Branch & Wheeler, 2017). They may eventually create black holes, which are detrimental for others—or continue to exist and still somehow shine in isolation, becoming the lonely neutron stars (DeWitt & DeWitt, 1973; Ferguson, 1991; Pickover, 1998; Dickinson, 2004; Melia, 2003a, b; Begelman & Martin, 2021). On the contrary, modest stars (or ‘red dwarfs’) and even giants never explode but faint gradually into ‘white dwarfs’ [retired stars] and eventually into ‘black dwarfs’ [which vanish from the view without a trace and whose lot is oblivion] (Mo et al., 2010). In a nutshell, the trajectory of a fading star continues to tell the story about her/his agency-network nexus.

‘Who does not want to end up like Domingo or Freni!’, exclaimed Glasha after I had asked her how she foresaw her retirement:

You are getting older and your voice is getting older too. But you can still sing better than many others, much better, even at the end of your career, you are much better than those who are only entering them. And it will be not soon that they will be able to reach your level of performance and international fame. You are still wanted by best theaters because you are a legend. Even when you completely retire from singing and teaching, you will remain the legend, surrounded by disciples and loyal people who admire you and follow your every step. Even if you are a lousy teacher, you are still be the legend. This is something that will stay with you forever.

This is true that super-giants like Placido Domingo or the deceased Mirella Freni never fall from their sky, even while fading, and that no one has doubts about their retirement into the domains of teaching and musical entrepreneurship because they mature in and finish their careers as a source of societal inspiration. They can be compared with ‘supernovae’—mature stars that explode and, while exploding, inspire the whole generation of new stars, thus giving birth to new networks. It is through their explosion that they reach professional immortality. Although a celestial explosion literally lasts for a very short time (such as minutes or even seconds), its fading glimmer stays for many years, visible from far away. They still continue to be perceived as supergiant within this ‘supergiant–supernova’ nexus. For example, everyone understands that the voice of the current diva Anna Netrebko is not the same as when she internationally exploded in 2002 (NYT, 2016; Opera, 2019). However, she is still in great demand as a singer and global elite migrant and what she is doing is quite enjoyable (ibid). It was a desired future for all my informants—their career orientation during their ‘nebula’ and ‘growing star’ phases. When such supernova artists retire, they can do this modestly, turning into vocal teachers (dimming ‘white dwarfs’) or in a fanfare manner, turning into lonely stars (‘neutron stars’) with their own small network and circle of disciples—or black hole owners. What is the most important, their work and lives never result in oblivion: their names and the memory of their art never dissolve into what astronomers define as the ‘dull stellar remnant’ (or ‘black dwarf’), which is equivalent to oblivion or artistic death.

To leave no trace of your art and talent, to turn into an unknown remnant after all these migration investments, is what my informants are afraid most of all. It is for this reason that some of them have decided to interrupt their global elite migration life cycle and not to enter the ‘in-career’ (main sequence) phases. ‘I am a failed star, a fallen star’, says one of the interviewed women:

I never made it to the real theater. During my post-conservatory training years, I decided to refer to music entrepreneurship because I saw no future for myself in the global opera industry. I suddenly realized that during one of the many vocal competitions that I had been attending for years. After my performance ta that concourse, a jury member told me in private that I had not skill that all patrons and agents would appreciate. So I decided to quite: I thought that if I had to fall down, I would fall down on my own.

She is now a migrant entrepreneur, running a small music enterprise in Italy and, therefore, located on the periphery of the global opera industry. A ‘failed star’, or ‘brown dwarf’, as astronomers would say, a young star that is doomed to fall from the sky before it starts shining, a young star that is not destined to make the main-sequence career (Bertin & Lin, 1996; Merritt, 2013). Such informants are now settled and rather well integrated in Italy or Europe. They are not singing but doing something else, running their own vocal school, opera agency or consulting firm for other aspiring artists.

The question is why they have failed as stars and how they perceive this transition.

I had spent so much time participating in various international concourses and searching for sponsors of my talent. The networking did not work the way I wanted. My parents’ money that I had spent on various private lessons had been almost exhausted. I was almost thirty, without a reliable agent, impressive repertoire and any worthy connections. No one wanted to promote myself. And I did not want to turn into somebody mediocre. I thought that one day I might just disappear as a profession and no one would notice my absence. I started to hate opera because I thought it had ruined all my life. It happened to be a difficult journey that I was not able to sustain further. At the same time, this was my profession and I had to support myself financially. That is why I decided to stop trying to become a singer and to open my own musical enterprise. To be honest, I still feel very bad about it at times. It has been not easy to fall down as a star just like that. I sometimes feel very bad.

Such transitions prove to be very painful, causing identity crisis in my informants. But this is a separate story, to be addressed more specifically later in this book.

4.3 ‘New Stars’ for ‘Old Clubs’

4.3.1 Galaxies and Networks

Preparations, concourses, diplomas…But did my informants really connect to the right people who would enable their entrance to the global opera space? The informants clearly understand that their rise or failure depended directly on their ability to build relationships with powerful people who make decisions in the world of opera on the transnational level. They acknowledge that their major mistake was their failure to build these relations as migrants and as elite professionals. Whenever it happened, they were weakly positioned within their networks. In this connection, it is important to remember that the overall purpose of the network for any category of labor migration is to foster ‘transition from the place of origin to a far-off work site’ (Portes, 1995: 26). From this angle, ‘migration is always a network-creating process, which develops an increasingly dense web of contacts between places of origin and destination’ (ibid: 22). An ‘independent social unity’, the migrant network plays an important role in migrants’ arrival, residence, job search and development of new identities. Given this, the network of a migrant inevitably interferes with his/her decision-making on his/her migration trajectory (Triandafyllidou, 2018; Triandafyllidou et al., 2022).

In this light, the concept of ‘migrant networking’ resonates with a navigation of unknown spaces by migrants—the activity that is present in the life of any migrant, regardless of his/her socio-economic status and migration history. ‘Social navigation’, through which migrants explore and utilize familiar and novel social relations, is a universal feature of all migrations (Triandafyllidou, 2018). However, each migration stream should have its own specificity of social, or relational, navigation. As noted by Anna Triandafyllidou in her pioneering article (ibid), configurations of social navigation (or exploration and utilization of networking relations) primarily depend on migration goals, which may be distinct for different migrant groups. In this light, I see the process of ‘astrogation’ (‘intergalactic navigation’) as a more complex format of social navigation and migrant networking, in which global elite migrants engage.

Scholars of migration studies and social networks note that any migrant network has a center of gravity—the relational nucleus that monitors or coordinates all network activities (Granovetter, 1973; Keskiner et al., 2022; Portes, 1995). A network is also comprised of varied segments, which differ in resources and social relations (ibid; Massey & Spinosa, 1997; Massey & Durand, 2004). This segmentation applies to membership requirements and obligations, concentration of influential network actors (nodes), network hubs (spaces for socialization) and iconic network members (Barkey & Godart, 2013; Bilecen & Lubbers, 2021; Granovetter, 1973; Portes, 1995) such elite professionals who become stars (Li et al. 2020; Petersen, 2017). One and the same network can thus offer different opportunities to different migrants, depending on which segment they try to enter: entering the same theater, vocal academy or bohemian hub, some elite migrants may end up extremely disappointed while others may turn into stars (ibid; Hartley, 2021; Shepard, 2010).

Existing global opera houses, elite conservatories, vocal academies and operatic agencies are often interconnected through the same influential people and shared resources for elite career (Agid & Tarondeau, 2007; Hartley, 2021; Shepard, 2010)—bearing resemblance with galaxies or galactic groups and clusters such as the Milky Way. We can further compare each such global opera place with a galaxy, which would be defined by astronomers as a ‘gravitationally bound system of stars’ (influential members), ‘stellar remnants’ (former stars), ‘interstellar gas’ (material for star making and infrastructural growth) and ‘dark matter’ (constituting dangerous segments, or spaces to be avoided).Footnote 1

Astrogation is synonymous to moving as if through the open intergalactic space (rather than the land-bounded seascapes)—the extremely fluid and dangerous (or destructive) space where there may be very little or null gravity and support. This is the network space that is being continuously reshaped because many existing networks (or ‘galaxies’) may become devoured by other networks any time and, therefore, run risk of disappearing and giving way to other networks with unpredictable relations. This is the space that is extremely difficult to understand, to enter and to go through because it is dark and unknown, in terms of being affected by various powerful forces that are often far beyond individual or group control.

4.3.2 Star Burst and Stellar Nurseries

An important property of both galaxies (Dickinson, 2004; Smith, 2004) and elite networks is star formation (Petersen, 2017; Walter, 2016). The ability to raise new stars is what makes a galaxy or network stronger and more desirable for navigation or astrogation. Looking for spaces that produce stars, astronauts seek to observe and understand their formation (Stahler & Palla, 2004) while elite professionals themselves want to become a star (Barkey & Godart, 2013; Hartley, 2021; Shepard, 2010). All informants admit having wanted to be made a star and having searched for an operatic stellar nursery yet with varied degrees of success. They confess having had this aspiration for a long time and having wanted to conquer the known galaxies of the global opera universe.

Galaxies may indeed have a stellar nursery—a specific segment of space where stars are created; and a specific space can turn into a stellar nursery under the two main conditions (Prialnik, 2000; Stahler & Palla, 2004). This space should have enough molecular cores to serve as raw material for star production (ibid). And there should be also ‘agitational forces’ in place such as nearby stars or supernovae: outside influences are necessary to create a star (ibid; Smith, 2004; Wheeler, 2007). On analogy, a highly desired elite network that is hosted by a prestigious opera house or conservatory is noted for its unique resources such as vocal training methods and rigidly selected recruitment of students [which are akin to the celestial raw material] and a unique concentration of best vocal teachers, pianist-coaches and associated brokers (Harrington, 2020; Hartley, 2021; Shepard, 2010), who act like the celestial agitational forces in their collaborative star-making project. It is exactly these molecular cores and agitational forces of the global operatic industry that all my informants were longing for at the beginning of their migratory journeys. For example, Placido Domingo has its own galaxy, embracing both established stars from the Los Angeles Opera (LA Opera) and the Washington National Opera (WNO) as well as new clusters of young artists educated in his interactive stellar nurseries, including such spaces as: Operalia (the most prestigious World Opera Competition and training program for young artists, functioning since 1993); Vilar-Domingo Young Artists’ Training Program in Washington D.C. (on the WNO premises); Training Program for Young Artists in the LA Opera; and the Training Program for Young Artists in Valencia, Spain (at the opera house Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia). However, not every operatic network has the power and the resources equivalent to those of Domingo’s galaxy.

4.3.3 Collisions and Interactions

Evaluating the power and resources of different celestial galaxies, astronomers note that galaxies have different shapes (Bertin & Lin, 1996; Binney & Merrifield, 1998; Dickinson, 2004). So are elite networks, as argued by scholars of arts, migration and globalization (Artz, 2016; Castells, 2000; Sandoz, 2019; Sassen, 2006, 2010). Some networks are very complex, omnivorous and asymmetrical structures with a lot of organizational mess and variation, and obscure rules of membership (Barkey & Godart, 2013; Castells, 2000; Bunse, 2019; Gou et al., 2020; Gurak & Caces, 2010; Ryan & D’Angelo, 2018). Like elliptical galaxies (Bertin & Lin 1996; Merritt, 2013; Schutz, 2003), they can grow to enormous sizes, devouring and controlling the majority of elite-career-building resources and governing other networks (Agid & Tarondeau, 2007; Barkey & Godart, 2013; Kerr, 2010). This can be illuminated by the network of the New York Metropolitan Opera, which I will describe further, or the above-mentioned network of Placido Domingo.

Other artistic networks may resemble a spiral galaxy (with pinwheels), which consists of the central disk of established stars and outward extending arms (Smith, 2004; Sparke & Gallagher, 2000)—relatively open segments that harbor young stars and welcome new members (Barkey & Godart, 2013; Hartley, 2021), like the Washington National Opera. There are also smaller networks (Artz, 2016; Lee, 2021), for example, the Greek National Opera or the Welsh National Opera. They can be compared with what Hawking and Penrose (1996) conceptualize as ‘irregular galaxies’, which appear any time, dominate our universe but live shorter lives.

Scholars of astronomy (Dickinson, 2004; Merritt, 2013; Mo et al. 2010) and migration (Bilecen & Lubbers, 2021; Massey & Spinosa, 1997; Massey & Durand, 2004; Portes, 1995) argue respectively that both galaxies and professional migrant networks are not always given or static: in fact, they can be modified or created through inter-galactic or inter-network interactions and collisions. During a minor interaction, a satellite (smaller) galaxy may disturb the bigger galaxy’s spiral arms. While a collision of galaxies may lead to their complete merger, sometimes with a devastating effect on smaller galaxies (ibid). On analogy, a professional encounter at an auditioning or at a professional concourse may result in a new relationship between the smaller network of an artist and the bigger network of a broker (Barkey & Godart, 2013; Bourdieu, 1984; Neff et al., 2005). And on a larger scale, a bigger theater may supplant the autonomy and networking resources of a smaller theater and its staff (Agid & Tarondeau, 2007; Kotnik, 2010, 2016; Walter, 2016).

Astronomers remind us that such inter-galactic mergers may result in new powerful stellar nurseries, with an extreme concentration of star formation, though not for a long time after the merger. And if we look into the formation of new powerful alliances in opera, we shall see that the best conditions for the membership of young artists were provided immediately after the merger. For example, the international exchange program for the training of young opera singers from the Soviet Union in la Scala, which was initiated in 1960, has the maximum number of exchange interns during the 1960s than during the 1970s (Kotkina, 2002). As ethnomusicologists note, aspiring musicians should follow and immediately take advantage of the constellations of resources offered by such restructuring events (Shepard, 2010; Petersen, 2017).

Astrophysicists draw our attention to the so-called ‘satellite interaction’, frequently observed when a gigantic galaxy interacts with its satellites (Smith, 2004; Wheeler, 2007). During the minor interaction, a satellite galaxy, which is a smaller companion galaxy travelling on bound orbits within the gravitational potential of a more massive and luminous host (primary) galaxy, disturbing the primary galaxy’s spiral arms (ibid). Satellitism means a relatively long-term partnership. Its logic resembles the practice of co-productions in opera, which involves sharing resources (setting, lights, choreography, props, orchestra and singing) and devising the production by more than one theater, with one company taking the strategic lead. The lead may be taken also by the satellite network. For example, the Greek National Opera (a European theater of Tier-2) has recently had a co-production of Cherubini’s Medea (the 2022/2023 season) with three A-level theaters in North America: Met Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Canadian Opera Company.Footnote 2 This collaboration has been initiated by the Greek National Opera with the help of the Greek grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. This co-production will affect the North American theaters only peripherally as it is only one of their many international projects. However, this interaction has more meaning for the Greek theater and its network. Hoping for a long-term satellite-relationship with each of these three theaters, the Greek National Opera seeks to feed its international ambitions and to establish its international reputation beyond Europe through developing this long-term partnership with North America.

Another example is the Welsh National Opera (also Tier-2), whose work is based entirely on co-productions and sharing singers and other resources with various kind of theaters and on various conditions. This opera house has thus recently had a co-production with the super-elitist Dubai Opera (Tier-1), which has a long-term strategic partnership with such commercial structures as the United Arabic Emirates’ Arabian Radio Network (linking opera with tourism) and with the Jaguar Land Rover (merging their audiences through operatic and sports events). There are many other examples of such interactions. The Mariinsky Theater in St Petersburg has regular co-productions with the Teatro Nacional de Sao Paolo in Lisbon and with many famous artistic directors and Tier-1 opera houses in Europe including the Vienna Opera and Bavarian State Opera. There is also the long-term partnership between the Latvian National Opera in Riga and the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. This is added by the Royal Opera House in Muscat (ROHM), which was opened in Oman in 2011 and which has regular co-productions with the perennial Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro (Italy), inviting Rossini’s artists ot perform in Muscat.

The history of the New York Metropolitan Opera is illuminative of even more powerful intergalactic network dynamics. The Met Opera has shaped the way it is now through a series of interactions and mergers with other theaters, business companies and artistic and business projects. Its foundation was an act of network cannibalism, when in 1883 the newly founded Met replaced the Old Academy of Music Opera House. Thus, like ‘an inter-galactic cannibal’, the Met’s young galaxy had actually ‘eaten’ the other, older, theater.

Soon after in 1885, the Met’s network merged with that of the newly appointed Leopold Damrosch as general director of the Met (literally during its second season). A famous German musician and former conductor of the New York Symphonic Orchestra, Damrosch enriched the Met’s network with entirely new repertoire and cast, beginning to stage mostly German operas and employing many European singers. And the Met was never the same as before: not anymore a city opera house but a growing national theater with expanding post-colonial roots, reflected both in its cultural products and professional contacts.

The second grand merger took place in 1892, when the Met was literally reconstructed after the fire. Together with the construction works came John Schoeffel as the opera’s new business partners, bringing new material resources for diversifying the repertoire, cast and vocal training of the artists—and thus opening the so-called ‘Golden Age of Opera’ and converting the Met into a rapidly expanding international network of artists and businesspeople.

Then there were two interactive connections that significantly improved the Met’s networking capacity. In 1966, the Met relocated to a new building on the 66th St on Broadway and became part of the Lincoln Center for the Performative Arts premises, where it situated even today. The Met is part of the Lincoln galaxy in terms of shared creative projects. However, it is still a solid network of its own, who has interactively ‘dived’ into Lincoln, while preserving its own integrity. And in 2006, Peter Gelb (former record producer) became the Met’s new general manager and partnered the opera house with many other theaters and established satellite connections with the circus- and movie- industries. Since then, the Met has been always using elements of circus performance on stage and Met’s products have been often converted into musical movies. Although those remain peripheral for Hollywood, such cinematographic works are still crucial for the Met Opera.

No less interesting dynamics has been illuminated by the history of the Met Opera’s national rival—the Washington National Opera after the WW1 in Washington D.C. Outperformed by the Met, the Washington National Opera ‘dove’ into the Kennedy Center’s artistic and business network in 1970: it literally moved onto its premises. Throughout the 1980–1996, Martin Feinstein (the new general director and the former Kennedy’s executive director) lured many famous and young European artists and established a stellar nursery—a famous training program for early career singers.

4.3.4 Black Hole: No Free Milk!

Scholars of Arts, Sports and Migration Studies often acknowledge the closed nature of all these influential elite networks: transnational elite professionals indeed find it extremely difficult to enter the most prestigious networks in their field—extremely closed relational systems to which outsiders are not welcome, with each members running a very high risk of being excluded any time (Besnier et al., 2018; Di Maggio & Garip, 2012; Petersen, 2017; Portes, 1995; Stambulova & Ryba, 2020). This main principle of elite network closure resonates with the well-known Greek legend that underpins the image of our Milky Way galaxy. In the ancient Greek mythology, the infant Heracles, the son of Zeus from a mortal woman, was once placed by his father under the breast of his sleeping wife Hera (Belkora, 2003; Waller & Hodge, 2003). Zeus wanted his son to become immortal by drinking the goddess’ divine milk. However, when the awakened Hera found that she was feeding un unfamiliar baby, she immediately pushed the unsolicited outsider away spilling some of her milk in the shape of a scarf, which is now known as the Milky Way (Paul, 1993). This legend can, nevertheless, serve as strong sociological metaphor to capture the essence of network access. Looking into the night sky, sociologists can indeed think about the Milky Way galaxy as a system of strict relations and rules, which remains closed to outsiders—or, at least, not offering them an easy access.

In fact, astronomers and physicists note that the majority of galaxies in our universe are gravitationally organized into groups, clusters and superclusters and have a black hole at their center—an ominous dark segment that can literally ‘suck’ and destroy anything that approaches it (Begelman & Martin, 2021; DeWitt & DeWitt, 1973; Ferguson, 1991; Melia, 2003a, 2003b). The black hole can be understood as the symbol of the network’s most severe obligations in a payback for its membership—the lifetime dependence on the network from which there is no way out and about which scholars of migration frequently write (Di Maggio & Garip, 2012; Massey & Spinosa, 1997; Massey & Durand, 2004; Portes, 1995).

Black hole is one of the most central problems related to both spacecraft navigation and elite networking. It is a special segment where the gravity (network control) is so strong that no one can escape it. Those who fall into a black hole are ‘stretched like spaghetti’ until they eventually ‘die’ (Begelman & Martin, 2021; Melia, 2003b; Schutz, 2003; Van der Bergh, 1998; Wheeler 2007). On the same note, in any strong elite network, there is a relational segment that may completely exhaust the elite professional and leave her/him without any career prospects (Besnier et al., 2017; Darby et al., 2022; Giddens, 2000; Sandoz, 2019). Like astronomic objects that fall into a cosmic black hole, elite professionals may also become trapped by their ominous networks because they fail to see those in advance. A black hole is, in fact, a trap that is very difficult to detect and, consequently, to avoid: that is why, it can be easily entered but not exited.

The most interesting thing is that black holes are not entered immediately: they may have a safe zone, from which it may still be possible to escape before reaching the actual point of no return (Levin, 2020; Melia, 2003b). In this connection, it seems reasonable to ask why people continue to fall into the black holes of their networks. There may be several explanations for this. Primarily, black holes are extremely difficult to be detected: they cannot be recognized in advance. Therefore, it may not be realistic to avoid them or to leave them on time (Schutz, 2003; Thorne, 1994). You may realize that you are trapped in the black hole when it is too late to change anything (Melia, 2003b).

Apart from that, blackholes may often appear attractive because they do not always ruin everything that reaches them (Schutz, 2003). Because of their strong gravitational power, they can also create stars and thus promise quite an enchanting scenario (ibid). Supermassive black holes often give birth to stellar nurseries (Branch & Wheeler, 2017). So do most powerful dictatorial regimes (like those in the Soviet Union or the Nazi Germany) create high-quality conservatories and opera houses (Kotkina, 2017; Panchuk, 2006).

In this relevance, there is a common illusion about the ‘black hole’ opposites—the so-called ‘white holes’, or ‘exclusive club’ segments with privileged entrance but unrestricted exit. Many elite professionals dream about such democratic professional networks where they can receive elite training and move on in any direction (Besnier et al., 2018; Shepard, 2010). Questioning the existence of such places, astronomers argue that, even if such spaces existed, they would be, in fact, very short-lived as eventually turning into black holes (Hawking & Penrose, 1996; Thorne, 1994; Wheeler, 2007). And if in reference to elite migrations, what happens in many cases is that ambitious elite professionals continuously look for elite closed-access places and invest in their access to figure out in the end that they have been trapped forever in severe relational obligations (Giddens, 2000; Shepard, 2010). In other words, an aspiring elite professional cannot always know for sure whether the targeted network will turn him/her into a star or ruin his/her career. For elite migrants, it is always a trial while the outcome will depend on the work of their agency.

Another strategy to achieve an ambitious goal of stardom is a ‘wormhole’—a shortcut route for reaching a desired segment of space in a very short time and avoiding blackholes. Astronomers generally argue that wormholes belong to science fiction while also note that Albert Einstein, the founder of the relativity theory, did truly believe in their possibility (Schutz, 2003; Visser 1996). Migration scholarship shows that, as an agentic strategy to reach a desired network, a wormhole remains a difficult target for elite migrants though some can still manage to find this shortcut (Barkey & Godart, 2013; Neff et al., 2005). And my book will further highlight whether this strategy eventually leads them into a black hole or to stardom.

4.3.5 A star and a spaceship

My book will further show that my informants indeed resemble stars in the sky, the stars that grow with the purpose to shine and hope to avoid fainting or falling down. Their stardom is, however, a difficult mission, which cannot be achieved without support. ‘Nature does not form stars in isolation’, note astronomers: stars are made in clusters and in galaxies. A galaxy is a spatial organization (network) of groups (clusters) of stars: it is a complex spatiality where groups of stars live and grow (Dickinson, 2004). And in order to find the right space or the right galaxy, one must be an astronaut. The stories of my informants will further prove that, for a global elite migrant, it is not enough to long to be a star: s/he must also learn to be an astronaut. The interviews shows that the global elite migrant is a growing star that, at the same time, can become an astronaut running its own spacecraft and astrogating new galaxies. The global elite migrant-artist is akin to a celestial body that can itself turn into a spaceship, which is not science fiction: the astrobiologist Irina Romanovskaya (2022) defines this recently discovered phenomenon as a ‘free-floating planet’ that has no other choice than to move to a new galaxy.