German impresario holds fundraiser for Putin’s ‘new regions’

German impresario holds fundraiser for Putin’s ‘new regions’

News

norman lebrecht

August 05, 2024

The German gadfly Axel Brüggemann reports that Dresden’s sometime Semper Ball chief Hans-Joachim Frey is organising a St Petersburg Ball for his patron, Vladimir Putin.

Top of the bill is Putin’s cellist and money-launderer Sergey Roldugin. Gergiev’s current Mariinsky star Olga Maslova will sing, along with Domingo protege Dmitry Korchak. The Italian Fabio Mastrangelo will conduct.

Frey proclaims: ‘Guests of the Petrovsky Opera Ball will participate in and witness a landmark event – ​​the largest charity project to collect donations for the development of culture and humanitarian support for residents of new regions of Russia. As part of the project, the Most Iskusstv (Bridge of Arts) Foundation is establishing personal scholarships named after P.I. Tchaikovsky for the best students of cultural and creative specialties in new regions of Russia. Every concerned citizen or organization can already make donations, the form of which can be very different – ​​a lot is needed for the development of Russian culture.’

Russia’s ‘new regions’ are a euphemism for areas of Ukraine that have been conquered in Putin’s illegal invasion.

Comments

  • Peter van Tast says:

    After Putin was honorary guest at Frey’s Dresden Ball, he asked Frey to organize such an event in St. Petersburg – in the Mariinsky Theatre. Few days before it happened, it was canceled by the Mariinsky – no idea, why. Some years later Frey brought the Dresden Ball to St. Petersburg, this time to the Mikhailovsky Theatre. And now again St. Petersburg, again organized by the now Russian citizen Frey with the help of his (and Putin’s) close friend Roldugin.
    BTW – also conductor Fabio Mastrangelo is Russian citizen.

    • WP says:

      At some time in the future this murderous regime will be overthrown. Will these goons then transplant to North Korea?

    • Queen of Spades says:

      Somehow you forgot to mention that back then the Putin/Frey’s Gala at the Mikhailovsky was conducted by Vladimir Jurowsky… A curious detail per se

  • Elizabeth Owen says:

    Shooting himself in the foot isn’t he by referring to the regions as “new”?

  • Guest Principal says:

    Imagine looking into your own eyes in a mirror and seeing what he sees.
    I almost feel sorry for him.

  • Tiredofitall says:

    I really need to stop reading these posts while I have my breakfast.

  • Yuri K says:

    “Putin’s illegal invasion”

    You forgot the mandatory word “unprovoked”, Norman.

  • william osborne says:

    Hans-Joachim Frey is not to be confused with the truly great German opera director Achim Freyer.

  • Herbie G says:

    Let’s not beat about the bush – an unmitigated, servile scumbag.

  • John Borstlap says:

    Incredible.

  • Chiminee says:

    And people here think that art and politics aren’t intertwined…

  • Beatitude says:

    “culture and humanitarian support for residents of new regions of Russia.”

    Fundraising for an imposed atrocity of their own making…

    Culture support to deal with the indoctrination.

    Humanitarian support to deal with all the rape, torture, murder and destruction from their unprovoked war on a sovereign democratic nation.

    A despicable occasion for Russians to get their gala on. And their unexpected candor regarding the occasion makes it all so much worse.

    • Mean comment says:

      Culture is important unless you say so. Luckily for them, it’s not your money nor your approval they are looking for. Perhaps that’s what bothers you?

      As in regards to “indoctrination” (in Donbas lol), the “unprovoked” and “democratic” indeed hint at indoctrination, just not where you’d assume.

  • NoteSplitter says:

    Death to tyrants!!!

  • Herbie G says:

    Talking of ‘art for art’s sake’ and not mixing in extraneous details, how about the fact that a man who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in 2016 and given a four-year prison sentence represented the Netherlands in this year’s Olympics?

    Should he be cheered on regardless of his previous record?

  • Dodi Komanov says:

    Practicaly all serious politicians and historians were warning for years against the enlargement of the NATO in the same time emphasizing the need to act in a politically wise manner after the fall of the Berlin Wall (Kennan, Kissinger, Cohen…) and the need to keep the US promise „not to move NATO one inch eastward“. One should read what Nikolaj Petro has to say about Russia and Ukraine and here is a link for the recent interview with Jeffrey Sachs. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/jeffrey-sachs-on-why-u.s.-foreign-policy-is-dangerously-misguided

    • Estonia_the_only_nato_border_now_open says:

      idiot! So what about Sachs???

      Putin’s war has made the previously neutral FINLAND join Nato..making the border a good 1000kms longer with Russia, and now closed for good for Russians to visit.
      Ie.
      Another nail in your crazy arguments and Pro-Putin propaganda.

      Btw the Baltic states also ASKED to join Nato,
      Nobody was ever forced to join,- so stuff that in your A…s and smoke it!

      • John Borstlap says:

        It is true that all the former soviet buffer states wanted to get away from Russia as soon as this was practically possible and wanted to join the more or less normal world outside the barbarian territory where cruelty and insanity reigns again. How come? Not difficult to understand. All the misery in the east of Europe was Russia’s making. Forgotten the cold war? It was started by Russia, and it was cancelled by Russia because they had begun it. And now they started cold war nr 2 in their paranoid idea that ‘The West’ wants to destroy Russia. In psychiatry it is called ‘projection’: one’s own neurosis is unacknowledged and is projected upon someone else.

  • MOST READ TODAY: