By Mark Trevelyan
(Reuters) -Russia said on Thursday it had made a new protest to Italy in a dispute over the cancellation of a concert in Italy where Valery Gergiev, a renowned Russian conductor with a record of support for President Vladimir Putin, had been due to perform.
The concert near Naples was scrapped last month following a storm of criticism, including from the widow of late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny who called Gergiev an “accomplice” of Putin. Italy’s culture minister had said the event risked becoming a “sounding board for Russian propaganda”.
Moscow registered an initial protest on July 23, accusing Italy of discrimination, cancel culture and caving in to anti-Russian lobbying.
On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the Italian chargé d’affaires two days ago to complain about an “ongoing anti-Russian campaign” in Italy that it said was aggravating a crisis in bilateral relations.
The ministry said Italy had reacted disproportionately to what it called Moscow’s rejection of “some odious statements by high-ranking representatives of the Italian government directed against Russia.”
It added, without providing examples, that Italian media had published false stories and carried out “Russophobic attacks with the full support of Italian ruling circles”.
The case highlights Russia’s fury at the shunning by the West of some of its leading artists in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Gergiev has conducted orchestras at the world’s leading concert halls but found himself unwelcome in the West after the start of the war. Milan’s La Scala, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and New York’s Carnegie Hall were among those to sever ties with him over his failure to condemn it.
He is now head of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre and St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre.
Gergiev has drawn strong criticism from opponents of Putin for performing over the years at events with political overtones, including in 2016 at a concert in the ruins of Palmyra in Syria after Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war on the side of Syria’s then-president, Bashar al-Assad.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
