The new season at La Scala will open on December 7 with Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov, as planned.
The theater management stressed that removing a work from the repertoire means "imposing a punishment on culture."
La Scala director Dominique Meyer told ANSA: "I'm not ready to hide when I read Dostoyevsky or Pushkin."
Meyer clarified that the repertoire of the new season is not directed against Ukraine, it was formed three years ago.
He also called Mussorgsky's opera "a great masterpiece".
In addition, the playbill for La Scala ballets in the new season includes The Nutcracker and Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky directed by Rudolf Nureyev.
A similar position is held by the chief conductor of La Scala, Ricardo Chailly.
In an interview with the newspaper La Repubblica, he emphasized that Pushkin and Mussorgsky will be on stage at the opening of the season, because they are important representatives of art and music of the 19th century, and to refuse them is the same as Shakespeare and Dante.
Honored Artist of Russia, opera singer Ildar Abdrazakov, who will perform on the stage of La Scala on December 7, expressed his gratitude to the Milan theater, emphasizing that he was happy to sing in Russian.
The performer added that at a moment like this, more art is needed, not the other way around, and expressed hope that "art can save the world."
Together with Abdrazakov, other Russian performers will take part in the production - Alexei Markov, Anna Denisova and guest soloist of the Mariinsky Theater Dmitry Golovnin.
Earlier, Andriy Kartysh, Consul General of Ukraine in Milan, expressed his disagreement with the inclusion of Russian opera in the repertoire of La Scala.
The diplomat urged the leadership of the theater and the city to revise the program, because the Ukrainian community in Italy took it negatively.
Kartysh also claimed that "culture is used by Russia to give weight to the claim of its strength and power" and accused the Italians of supporting Russian propaganda.
The mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, in turn, said that the protest against "Boris Godunov" seemed to him "a really wrong act on the part of the consul."
Vittorio Zgarbi, deputy head of the Italian Ministry of Culture, called calls to cancel the opera Boris Godunov at La Scala stupid and added that this work is "a masterpiece belonging to mankind."
Since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine, many cultural figures and groups have faced unprecedented Russophobia in the West.
So in November 2022, the Russian conductor and violinist Vladimir Spivakov was removed from the leadership of the International Music Festival in Colmar, which he headed for more than 30 years.
The organizers sent the artist a letter without a signature, but full of vague wording.
In early autumn, director Philip Los lost his job in the theater in Estonia, having compared the situation of local Russians with Jews during the Great Patriotic War.
A number of organizations terminated cooperation agreements with Russian conductor Valery Gergiev due to his refusal to condemn Russia's actions, and singer Anna Netrebko was fired from the Metropolitan Opera and the Bavarian State Opera.
They did not stay aside from the wave of Russophobia and the politics of Poland: in the spring of 2022, the Minister of Culture and Heritage, Piotr Glinsky, said that Russian culture should disappear from public space, regardless of its achievements.
At the same time, a number of EU countries do not support the Russophobic course and the abolition of culture.
Thus, the program of the Royal Opera House La Monnaie in Brussels for the 2022/23 season includes productions of The Queen of Spades, Eugene Onegin and The Nose, as well as works by Prokofiev, Glinka and Tchaikovsky.
In Italy, rallies were held in the summer of those who disagreed with the policy of the country's authorities regarding the events in Ukraine, and the organizers of the International Film Festival in Transylvania spoke out against the ban on Russian cinema.
The organizers of the Munich International Film Festival did the same.