The organizers of the festival in Wiesbaden refused to cancel the performance of the Russian Netrebko
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The organizers of the International May Festival in Wiesbaden (Germany) refused to cancel the performances of Russian musicians, in particular, the singer Anna Netrebko. “Yesterday, the Wiesbaden International May Festival (IMF) received a letter from the General Director of the National Opera of Ukraine Petro Chupryna, and the Minister of Culture and Media Klaudia Roth received a letter from the Minister of Culture of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko,” the statement reads. The organizers of the festival added that they received an official refusal to participate in the Ukrainian musicians’ event due to the scheduled performance of the sanctioned Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko. They called the refusal of Ukrainians to perform on the same stage with Putin’s supporters as “imposed politics”: “The cancellations that we have now received both from the National Philharmonic of Ukraine and from the Kharkiv Taras Shevchenko Theater are obviously politically motivated or imposed by politics “. The organizers of the Wiesbaden Festival noted that in his letter to his German colleague, “Tkachenko makes it clear that the Ukrainian side does not tolerate any cooperation with people who represent Russian culture, as well as any events where Russian culture will be presented.” . “For us, this would mean that we can no longer allow Russian artists to perform, play any Russian music, and Russian poets to speak. This demand by the Minister of Culture of Ukraine to completely remove Russian culture from our programs cannot be acceptable to us in a free country.” , the statement says. The Wiesbaden festival emphasized that it will not choose between two cultures, because it is a “false alternative”, it will not condemn the Russian people and repeated the propaganda thesis about “culture outside politics”: “We have taken a clear position against Putin’s war of aggression, as well as against all actions Putin’s regime. But this cannot mean the condemnation of the entire Russian people and the entire Russian culture. Culture always lives by human values that stand above nations.” Photo: Anna Netrebko / Facebook Previously, the authorities of the German federal state of Hesse and its capital, the city of Wiesbaden, opposed Anna Netrebko’s participation in the festival in May 2023. The joint statement emphasized that Russia is waging an aggressive war against Ukraine, in which people are dying every day, and given this, it is unclear how a Russian woman can perform at the festival in Wiesbaden. However, the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden did not abandon its plans to give the stage to the pro-Putin singer. In March 2022, Anna Netrebko, who refused to publicly distance herself from Russian President Vladimir Putin, was fired from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Read also: An exhibition about the Russian school of architecture was canceled in New York
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