Germany’s culture minister demands release of Russian opera director

Germany’s culture minister demands release of Russian opera director

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norman lebrecht

August 30, 2017

Monika Grütters today called on the Russian minister of culture to arrange the release from house arrest of the Moscow director Kirill Serebrennikov, who is facing politically-motivated charges.

She said: ‘I urge my colleague, the Russian Minister of Culture, to work with his authorities to enable Serebrennikov to walk free. Anything else would be an affront not only in social and political terms, but also in cultural politics.’

Serebrennikov’s arrest has prevented him from staging Hansel and Gretel in Stuttgart next month. This is the first Government-level protest about his detention.

Comments

  • Alex says:

    He is charged with embezzlement and has no previous convictions, so he will almost certainly get a suspended sentence. Now the more interesting question: should someone who can’t explain what he did with $1M of state money be allowed to work as stage director?

    • John says:

      Of course you’re assuming there was $1M of state money to be lost and that he was the one who did something with it. Trumped up charges are de rigueur in Russia when you want to harass someone or get them out of the way.

      • Gonout Backson says:

        As Sergey Magnitsky well knows, wherever he is today.

      • Anon says:

        Yes, but your bias could be in the way of looking at a case where someone can’t explain, what happened to the above mentioned US$ 1 mio. At least it is an option, and all these brainwashed armchair cold war warriors again here, who know nothing about this, except that all Russian must be implicitly evil and have the verdict before the facts are in, are just annoying.

        • Gonout Backson says:

          You know what’s wrong with your arguments ?

          You haven’t any.

          (Except for some very old and worn out, “liturgical” anathemas).

        • Furzwängler says:

          It seems you are one of the many German sad “Russlandversteher” (translated properly as “Russia Understanders”, but more idiomtically perhaps as “Russia Sycophants”. Nicht wahr?

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