Anna Netrebko was invited to sing at a festival in Germany, but now artists from Ukraine and even Russia refuse to perform at it

On February 13, the program of the International May Festival in Wiesbaden (Germany) was announced, and it included the name of the Russian opera diva Anna Netrebko. The Ukrainian participants, seeing this, refused to perform on the same stage with her and said that they would not come to the festival if Netrebko remained in the program. The scandals didn't end there. DW.

Photo: IStock

The International May Festival will be held in the capital of the federal state of Hesse and a major cultural center of Germany from April 30 to May 31 this year.

Development of the conflict

The festival management received a letter from the Director General of the National Opera of Ukraine Petr Chuprina, as well as a letter from the Minister of Culture of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko, addressed to the State Minister of Germany for Culture and Media Claudia Roth. Tkachenko's message stated that the Ukrainian side would not tolerate any cooperation with people who represent Russian culture.

The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine delivered an ultimatum to the organizers of the festival: the participation of Ukrainian performers or Netrebko.

On the subject: Football players from Russia and Ukraine staged a mass brawl in a Turkish hotel

Local Hessian politicians came out in support of the Ukrainians. However, the leadership of the Hessian State Theater stated that raising the issue in this way was unacceptable in a free country. “We have taken a clear position against Putin’s war of aggression, as well as against all actions of the Putin regime. But this cannot mean that we condemn the entire Russian people and the entire Russian culture,” the theater said in a statement. — The International May Festival in Wiesbaden is international. He is not faced with a choice in favor of one national culture or another. He chooses one single culture - the one that should unite everyone.”

What did the Ukrainian side say

The management of the theater and the festival is sure that Ukrainian politicians forced the decision not to go on stage to the Ukrainian participants.

This statement from the theater in Wiesbaden greatly surprised the chief conductor of the National Opera of Ukraine and the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, Nikolai Dyadyura, who was supposed to perform at the International May Festival with the work “Requiem” by Giuseppe Verdi performed by the orchestra of the National Philharmonic and the choir of the National Opera of Ukraine.

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“They approached me and asked if we could come to the Wiesbaden Festival, and of course I agreed. At the time when negotiations were underway about our participation, the name of the Russian singer Netrebko was not in the program. When we found out that she would participate in the festival, we said that we would not participate in it if Netrebko was there. We can’t sing “Requiem” with her,” said Nikolai Dyadyura. He explained his position by the fact that Anna Netrebko is under sanctions in Ukraine, and her position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine is ambiguous.

“Russians use cultural events to promote their ideology. Therefore, refusing to participate in a festival where Netrebko is present is our conscious choice,” noted the Ukrainian conductor.

He denies any pressure on his teams from the state. “Europeans must understand that this is not pressure, but our position. We have now rehearsed our repertoire for four hours, and for two hours we worked without light or heat. And you want us to react differently! Such discussions and philosophy take place in peacetime, but here we are at war,” says Dyadyura.

“It was the groups who told us their position that they refused to participate in the Wiesbaden Festival because they could not be on the same stage with Anna Netrebko. Because this person, very clearly associated with the Putin regime, supported it throughout his creative life and at the beginning of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation said that he could not condemn Putin’s actions because he loved his homeland. We cannot afford a dialogue through culture with representatives of Russia,” Galina Grigorenko, Deputy Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, noted in an interview. She denies any pressure on art representatives from the ministry.

Pussy Riot

Instead of the National Symphony Orchestra and the choir of the National Opera of Ukraine, the punk rock band Pussy Riot agreed to perform at the festival with their project “Riot Days”, which was based on the book of the same name by Maria Alekhina.

“I want to speak out, I want to speak out against the war in Ukraine and I want to be heard. If you think it can't get any worse, it can. You just don't know Russia. “Russian World” is not about peace, they want people to simply survive. They cannot live without war,” Alekhina said in an interview.

But later it became known that the Russian group Pussy Riot also refused to perform at the festival in Wiesbaden. Group member Maria Alyokhina stated that no one had spoken to the group about Netrebko's involvement.

“Nobody told us about participating in the Netrebko festival. Equally, no one told us that they were simply trying to plug a hole with us, placing Ukrainians instead of those who refused to speak. We, of course, in such circumstances cancel the concert. We refuse to participate out of solidarity with Ukrainian artists, ”said Meduza member of the group Maria Alyokhina.

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As reported at the press conference, they intended to invite Kirill Serebrennikov to the festival in Wiesbaden with the play “The Black Monk,” staged in Hamburg. However, technically this plan was not feasible. Instead of the Kharkov State Academic Ukrainian Drama Theater named after. Taras Shevchenko was invited to the festival by the Ukrainian theater project “DAKH”. However, there has been no response yet.

As ForumDaily wrote earlier:

• Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko was fired from the Metropolitanoperas.

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