Ukraine envoy misfires badly at La Scala
NewsThe head of the Ukrainian consulate in Milan has written to Italy’s national opera house, urging it to cancel its season opening performance of Boris Godunov next month.
Andrii Kartysh said that Modest Musorgsky’s opera, completed in 1873, could be utilised to support ‘potential elements of propaganda’.
He added that Putin’s Russia was ‘using culture to lend weight to its assertions of greatness and power.’
The consul’s intervention is a rare misstep in Ukraine’s boycott campaign against Putin’s cultural supporters. An opera 150 years old has nothing to do with the present war and operagoers have the right to decide for themselves how they interpret long-bygone events in Russian and Ukrainian history.
The consul ought to be recalled.
A sad example of a ( self – declared ) victim turning into ‘ executioner ‘ , this might lead some to start boycotting Ukrainian artists for a change , so that this vicious circle continues on and on ? Most of us are tired of this ludicrous situation affecting the arts and people in general
This deadly, destructive war could drag on for years. Let the audience decide if they want to support Russian artists and music. Americans and Europeans are already complaining about the billions given to Ukraine during a recession with high inflation.
I wish American had the attitude about 150-year-old artworks not being reflective of current events. TV could then stop beating its breast whenever Gone With the Wind is broadcast.
Yet another person who has been fooled into thinking “Gone With the Wind” is a documentary from the 1870s.
It’s one thing to disagree with someone’s view; it’s another to unreflectively call for the consul’s “recall”. The unreflective denial that the consul may be right simply reflects this site’s owner’s own bigotry. He and others like him love piously talking about the purity of art while knowing fully well that precisely this kind of art has been used relentlessly and conspicuously for first Soviet and then Russian propaganda. They probably also clutched their pearls about “cancel culture” when the numerous Putin shills like Gergiev and Netrebko were denied the opportunity to keep using the world’s top venues for their propaganda – spoken or unspoken.
And by the way, the 19th century glorification of Russian imperialism, by writers and composers regarded as “great”, has everything to do with today’s moment. You may avert your eyes from, say, Pushkin’s glorification of genocide in the Caucasus but this won’t wish away the truth.
Bravo!
Have you ever even heard of Shostakovich Babi Yar Symphony and do you even know what it is about?
Goodness, gracious! Since when was it “re-callable” to state the obvious? Russia has, for generations, used art to further its propaganda of “greatness.” This is a time for standing back and looking at the War and reflecting that Imperialism, wherever it comes from, is a flawed and anachronistic foreign policy.
It has caused immense suffering throughout the world. Opera can be a tool of Imperialism, as can be Ballet, Theatre, and Visual Art exhibitions.
There is such a thing as artistic excellence, and Russian artists have, over the centuries, produced beautiful, meaningful works. But,
Putin and his enablers in the West should realize that now the government must be held accountable for rape, murder, torture, and execution of people with sledge hammers.
That should put “Boris” in context. The envoy should not be recalled for making an accurate accessment.
But putting “Boris” in context to score political points for your side of the political war is in itself Imperialistic. Much of great European art, which includes Russia, was influenced or created by European Imperialism and used to achieve its political objectives of expansionism and glorification. The purist in this argument seems to me to be the person who, via the act of cancelation, must subordinate art through an idealistic goal of spreading his version of democracy all over the world which in the end only masquerades as democracy. Allow the performance of music, in this case opera, be judged by its timeless artistc standards instead of besmirched by the current political fashion of the day
NL talking absolute twaddle – again . Why should the consul be recalled ?
The consul should not be recalled. His demand of canceling the new Italian production of a Russian opera written in 19th century about events from early 17th is certainly a mistake, but he should not be judged so harshly when his country and his countrymen are being invaded, bombed, tortured, raped, murdered, destroyed systematically by Russia for almost nine months now with no end in sight. To refuse his demand is reasonable, but to demand his removal is not.