Ukraine: the Philharmonie de Paris in turn cancels concerts by conductor Valery Gergiev, renowned p – franceinfo

The Philharmonie de Paris announced on Monday, on the fifth day of the war in Ukraine, that it had in turn canceled concerts by conductor Valery Gergiev, reputed to be close to Vladimir Putin, “in solidarity with the Ukrainian people“.

“The invasion of Ukraine by Russia will lead the Cité de la Musique – Philharmonie de Paris to modify its programming in the coming months in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. (…) The concerts (…) scheduled for April 9 and 10 in the Grande salle Pierre Boulez are already canceled”writes the institution in a press release.

At the same time, the Verbier Festival, a prestigious classical music festival in Switzerland, announced on Monday that it had “requested and accepted“Gergiev’s resignation as musical director of his orchestra.

On Friday, the famous New York hall Carnegie Hall announced the first to have dismissed the Russian conductor from a series of performances scheduled for the weekend.

The day before, La Scala in Milan also asked him to clarify his position on Ukraine and to publicly plead for a “peaceful solution” to the confit, otherwise his performances of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, scheduled for March 5 and 13 , could be cancelled.

General director of the famous Mariinsky theater in Saint Petersburg, Valery Gergiev, 68, is one of the most sought-after conductors in the world.

His closeness to Putin, whom he has known since 1992, and his loyalty to the Russian president on the annexation of Crimea, as well as his participation in concerts in bombarded South Ossetia and in Palmyra alongside the Syrian army, have been the subject of much controversy over the past decade.