News
Pro-Putin orchestra conductor Valery Gergiev will not be taking the stage in Italy next week. The Italian news agency ANSA reported the cancellation of a concert that had been scheduled for July 27 in Caserta. The move comes after efforts by the Alexei Navalny-founded Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), as well as Ukrainian and antiwar Russian activists and the Vice President of the European Parliament, Pina Picierno, who all demanded that the concert be called off due to Gergiev’s close ties to the Russian dictator.
Italy’s culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, said in a statement on July 15 that allowing Gergiev to participate in the festival risked “sending the wrong message”:
“Ukraine is an invaded nation, and Gergiev's concert can transform a high-level, but objectively controversial and divisive, musical event into the sounding board of Russian propaganda. Which for me would be deplorable.”
Gergiev has acted as an authorized representative for Putin during elections, has signed letters supporting the annexation of Crimea, and has not spoken out against Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time of the report, a petition calling for the concert’s cancellation had gathered more than 19,000 signatures. If the performance went ahead, it would have marked Gergiev’s first appearance on stage in Western Europe since Russia unleashed its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny and chair of the Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights, welcomed the news in a post on Telegram:
“Valery Gergiev’s concert in Italy has been canceled. And that is good news. Not joyful — good. No artist who supports the current dictatorship in Russia should be welcomed in Europe. It is precisely because of regime loyalists like Gergiev that Putin attempts to present himself as a ‘respectable figure’ in the West. And if Gergiev loves the dictator and murderer so much, let him conduct for him personally. Thank you to everyone who supported the campaign. This is a small step, but those small steps forge a great victory.”
Gergiev himself told Russian state news agency TASS that he was unaware of the cancellation. “I have no such information,” the conductor said.
Russia’s ambassador to Italy, Alexey Paramonov, commented that he was “deeply troubled” by the decision, which he said revealed Italy’s “true stance” on “cancel culture” and represented a sign that the country was “entirely abandoning” its cultural ties with Russia. “It is sad to see Italy [bending] to the demands of Ukrainian immigrants and other groups, and their political lobbying,” the official added.
The performance had been planned as part of the Un’Estate da RE festival, held at the Royal Palace in the city of Caserta, in Italy’s Campania region. Vincenzo De Luca, head of the region, previously addressed protests by stating that “Culture… must not be influenced by politics and political logic,” and said he was “proud” to welcome Gergiev to his city. De Luca described the ban on performances by pro-Putin artists in Europe as “a moment of stupidity” and “a moment of madness.” The festival is notably financed in part by the European Union.
Valery Gergiev is the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, and since December 2023, he has also headed the world-famous Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. He served as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic from 2015 until March 1, 2022, a position from which he was dismissed after refusing to condemn Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Gergiev has also been banned from performing at Carnegie Hall in New York due to his support for Vladimir Putin.
Research by the independent outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe has established that foundations with ties to Gergiev have received almost 2 billion rubles (close to €22 million) from Russia’s state budget since the start of the invasion.
The ACF released an investigative report on Gergiev in 2022 titled “The Conductor of Putin’s War.”