The risk is to relaunch the pernicious Russian propaganda
, also through the staging of a play set in Russia in the 600s, at the time of Ivan the terrible and written about 150 years ago.
Under this impulse, the Ukrainian consul in Milan Adrii Kartysh wrote to the superintendent of the Scala Dominique Meyer, the mayor Giuseppe Sala and the president of the Region Attilio Fontana to ask them not to open the season on 7 December with a Russian opera, namely Boris Godunov,
and to "review the programming" which includes "Russian music performances" and the recital of soprano Anna Netrebko.
It matters little that the
theater in June presenting the season explained that the decision to inaugurate with the title of Musorgsky, taken from the play of the same name written by
Pushkin
, was taken three years ago
, well before the outbreak of the war and that the manifesto of 'work shows the horrors carried out by Boris, or the bloody face of the heir to the throne he had killed.
According to the consul,
there is still the risk of "propaganda elements
" and not only in Musorgsky's work but also in other Russian music performances and in the recital of the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko.
Hence the request to review "the programming".
Kartysh in the text thanked the authorities for "the manifest support, still palpable" towards Ukraine and the Ukrainians since the beginning of the "war".
But he underlines "great disappointment and regret" within the Ukrainian community in Italy
following the artistic choices of La Scala, which in recent days has resulted in an online signature collection asking to replace Russian shows.
"Precisely because culture is used by the Russian Federation to give weight to the assertion of its greatness and power - he wrote -,
supporting its propagation can only nourish the image of the regime
in force there today and therefore, to extension, its nefarious ambitions and its countless crimes ".
La Scala
- which last April organized a concert for Ukraine raising 380 thousand euros and welcomed a dozen Ukrainian girls in the Academy's dance school -
in the past had already said no to what it considers "a witch hunt. "
as the superintendent had defined it against" canceling Russian works ".
"It is not right to penalize the artistic aspect for the tragedy that is happening"
the musical director Riccardo Chailly said at the presentation of the musical season.
There is therefore no intention of changing the title, which will debut in less than a month and which tests are about to begin.
Certainly the controversy will not end here.
The open topic concerns the autonomy and freedom of art.
The consul, however, considers it a different matter.
Only when the conflict is over, he is convinced, can Russian culture "once again be freed from its political reality" and be "freely appreciated, without ethical remorse".