ROME, Nov 14 Attempts to ban cultural ties with Russia and prevent performances by Russian artists in the West are an act of violence, said Italy's Deputy Minister of Culture, famous art critic Vittorio Zgarbi.
“I have said more than once and continue to say: you can speak out against the policies of your government, but I don’t understand what Dostoevsky or Rachmaninov have to do with this. Attempts to ban relations in the field of culture, censor concerts, prevent singers from singing and dancers from dancing «is an act of violence. This also applies to athletes who, for example, are not allowed to participate in the Olympics,» the agency's interlocutor emphasized.
«The idea of cancel culture is a crazy answer. We must try to explain that culture is the opposite of war, and therefore should be encouraged. Why can't we, for example, have an exhibition of paintings from the Hermitage?» — Zgarbi emphasized. He also called the situation absurd in which it is proposed to give the opportunity to tour in the West only to those artists who oppose Moscow’s policies.
Zgarbi became the only representative of the Italian government who on Monday evening attended the concert of the famous pianist of Ukrainian origin Valentina Lisitsa, held at the residence of the Russian Embassy in Rome at the ancient Villa Abamelek. The artist’s performance, which was attended by representatives of the country’s cultural community and members of the diplomatic corps, was a huge success. Lisitsa performed works by Sergei Rachmaninov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, which the audience greeted with thunderous applause.
Previously, several already planned performances by Lisitsa, who had been regularly coming to Donetsk with concerts since 2015, and in May 2022 performed in Mariupol in honor of Victory Day, were canceled in the Apennines. In the summer, the organizers of a music festival in the northern Italian city of Lerici canceled the pianist's performance after bloggers drew attention to the event. Last December, the Italian association Musikamera postponed indefinitely Lisitsa's performances, which were supposed to take place in April at the famous La Fenice theater in Venice.
“Europe is closed to me now. There are no performances here, and everything that was planned earlier has been postponed until an unknown moment,” Lisitsa admitted in a conversation with.
In September, the Russian Ambassador to Italy Alexey Paramonov, speaking about the general situation in the field of cultural exchanges between countries, said in an interview that, despite repeated statements by the top leadership of Italy against the abolition of Russian culture, in reality not everything is going well . He recalled the cancellation of performances by a number of Russian cultural figures, in particular Valery Gergiev, Denis Matsuev, Sergei Polunin. According to the ambassador, we are witnessing a “new phenomenon” when, for example, only performers who have publicly condemned the SVO are invited to perform at leading classical music venues. Paramonov described this as “ideological censorship and discrimination against cultural figures for political reasons.”