ROME (AP) — A concert by Russian conductor Valery Gergiev has been canceled, organizers in Italy announced Monday, following protests against giving the stage to the conductor who has been largely barred from European venues for failing to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Gergiev had been invited to conduct during a summer festival at the Royal Palace of Caserta near Naples next Sunday. The regional governor, Vincenzo de Luca, had defended the invitation, saying that “the logic of preclusion … does not help peace.’’
The invitation had been widely criticized by human rights activists, Russian opposition figures and European parliamentarians.
Gergiev, 72, is considered close to President Vladimir Putin. He has been the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg since 1988 and in December 2023 also became artistic director of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, where he replaced general director Vladimir Urin, who signed a petition against the war.
Milan’s La Scala was the first theater in the West to cut off relations with Gergiev, who was engaged at the theater when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, after he failed to respond to Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala’s appeal to speak out against the war. Gergiev was fired as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic in March 2022.
