A scene from La Dama di Picche (ph. Brescia and Amisano, copyright Teatro alla Scala)
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Mayor Beppe Sala explained that if the conductor Valery Gergiev he will not speak out against Putin and the Russian invasion on Teatro alla Scala will immediately stop working with him. The question is interesting. On the one hand, there is a request from a client – because this Beppe Sala is, from a formal point of view as well, being the president of the Theater Foundation – to express an act of condemnation with respect to the unjustified invasion of theUkraine. It seems an absolutely right thing: too many, to go back to Nazism, sided with the regime without endowing themselves with critical thinking. Therefore, since Putin’s is a criminal action, those who do not condemn it are liable to blame, and those who do not condemn criminals do not work. Thought has its own logic.
On the other hand, however, if we had not had the patronage of emperors, totalitarian regimes (such as the Church and its temporal power, just to say a disturbing thing), princes and sovereigns, practically all culture would not exist. More: even in today’s world, if it were not for the patronage of controversial rich people, of entrepreneurs even with their hands covered in blood, of autocrats, much of art (in all its forms), it would not exist. Gergiev himself without Putin could not have done anything, and cited Rostropovic it doesn’t help: different contexts, different realities, different scope, including economic ones. Moreover, let us not forget that for one Rostropovic the Soviet Union produced hundreds of geniuses in chess, the arts, and science. Yet it was a despotic regime.
There is no solution to this dilemma. Or art is asked to take sides with politics, even where it seems simpler, as in this case, where there is an aggressor and an attacked, where there is a powerful who attacks a weak one. Or art is asked not to be part of political contention, and sometimes to exploit politics. And then one cannot ask not to work for Popes (some, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were really terrible, yet great masterpieces were born then), for tyrants, for despots. As I said, there is no solution to this dilemma which – perhaps unwittingly – Beppe Sala has the merit of bringing us back up to date.
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