Ukraine, Sgarbi: “Aut aut to Gergiev absurd, how to make Pirandello pay for Mussolini’s faults”

“The intimidation of the conductor Gergiev by the Carnegie Hall in New York and the Munich Philharmonic, and now also by the Scala in Milan, has the flavor of a hateful revenge. It is disconcerting, unlikely, grotesque. , and it is exactly the same that they blame Putin “. To tell Adnkronos it is Vittorio Sgarbi who thus comments on the distancing that the mayor of Milan Beppe Sala asked to take to the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, whose support to Vladimir Putin is known. “Culture – Sgarbi snaps – cannot be used as a weapon of blackmail, because this is blackmail. It is like making Pirandello pay for Mussolini’s sins. Hitting culture is hateful”. Moreover, the art critic emphasizes, “Gergiev did not praise anything, he did not make any statements, he is a friend of Putin, it is not that to play he must pronounce himself against Putin, it is literally absurd”. It is “the same, identical attitude that they reproach Putin himself”. Sgarbi then cites other examples in history, motivating his disappointment even better: “No one has ever asked Feltrinelli not to be on Fidel Castro’s side,” he explains. Likewise, “the attitude adopted with another great conductor, Wilhelm Furtwangler, who had conducted various concerts for the benefit of the Nazi regime was quite different”, recalls the deputy. “In February 1938 he directed the Berlin Philharmonic for the Hitler Youth, and, in the same year, Richard Wagner’s opera The Master Singers of Nuremberg for Adolf Hitler’s birthday. His concerts were also broadcast on the radio to cheer him up. troops “. After the war, “he justified himself by saying that he had tried to protect German culture – Sgarbi says – Yet Furtwangler was called upon to direct again in public, in Italy, just after the Second World War: and it was precisely the Teatro alla Scala in Milan that put scene The Ring of the Nibelung under his direction “.