Rome, Navalny widow blast Italy invite for pro-Kremlin maestro

Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky Theatre in St.Petersburg, Russia, on May 1, 2013. (Dmitry Lovetsky / AP)

Italy’s culture minister joined the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Tuesday in condemning an invitation for maestro Valery Gergiev to perform near Naples, saying it risked being propaganda for Moscow.

Russian conductor Gergiev, a personal friend of President Vladimir Putin who has since December 2023 led Moscow’s world famous Bolshoi Theatre, has been shunned by the West since the start of the Ukraine war for failing to denounce Russia’s invasion.

But he has been invited to conduct what organisers described as an “unforgettable symphony concert” on July 27 at the former royal palace of Reggia di Caserta, near Naples in southern Italy.

Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has called for the concert to be cancelled and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, pressed the case in an editorial on Tuesday in Italian daily La Repubblica.

“Any attempt to turn a blind eye to who Valery Gergiev is when he’s not conducting and to pretend that this is merely a cultural event with no political dimension... is pure hypocrisy,” she wrote.

Just hours later, Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli issued a statement warning the concert “risks sending the wrong message”.

“Ukraine is an invaded nation and Gergiev’s concert could transform a high-level... musical event into a platform for Russian propaganda,” he said.

“For me, this would be deplorable.”

Stand-in for Putin

Giuli is a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right government, which has strongly backed Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

He noted the concert was part of a programme of events promoted and paid for by the region of Campania.

Campania regional leader Vincenzo De Luca, from the centre-left Democratic Party, has defended the concert, saying that “culture is a tool to keep dialogue open”.

On social media on Friday, he noted an Israeli conductor was also on the programme, adding: “We don’t ask those men of culture to answer for the political choices of those who lead their respective countries.”

He repeated his position on Tuesday, condemning Putin’s actions in Ukraine but saying that refusing to engage in dialogue “only serves to fuel the rivers of hatred”.

But Navalnaya, whose husband died in an Artic penal colony last year in what she and his supporters say was a killing on Putin’s orders, was scathing.

“As Putin’s cultural ambassador, Valery Gergiev implements Russia’s soft power policy. One of his current goals is to normalise the war and Putin’s regime,” she wrote.

She described the Caserta concert as a “test balloon” for boosting Putin’s image in Europe and noted it was being praised by Russian authorities.

“Forgive me, but if the Kremlin is happy with you in 2025, then you are definitely doing something wrong,” she wrote.

Other members of the Democratic Party have called for the concert to be cancelled, as have other cultural figures outside Italy.

Peter Gelb, general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera and a staunch supporter of Ukraine, told AFP that Gergiev “is no less than an artistic stand-in for Putin”.

He added: “There can be no ‘cultural exchange’ with mass murderers and kidnappers of children, which is the current modus operandi of the Russian regime.”

Gergiev has stood by Putin’s policies for more than two decades and performed propaganda concerts in honour of Russian military victories in the past.

In one of his most criticised moves, Gergiev conducted a concert in the ruins of Syria’s Palmyra after Moscow’s intervention in the country on the side of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

He also conducted a triumphant concert in Georgia’s Tskhinvali region after the Russian invasion in 2008, just a few metres (feet) from a detention centre where Georgian civilians were being held.