First at La Scala, Mattarella: “Russian culture cannot be erased”. Meyer replies to Sgarbi: “Pity for his words”
“I’ve never felt like a foreigner.” The superintendent of the Scala Dominique Meyer thus responds to the controversy opened by Vittorio Sgarbi, on the day of the premiere at the historic Milanese theater. “For too many years the superintendent of La Scala has been a foreigner”, said the art critic yesterday, who entered the Meloni government as undersecretary for culture, railing against the cultural policies of the mayor of Milan Beppe Sala.
“I won’t comment on this, I’ve been in Italy for 30 years and the first time I came to La Scala was 1980”, Meyer replied today, a few hours after the debut of “Boris Godunov”. “I have never felt like a foreigner. And I feel at home where culture is created. For the first time I heard this harsh word, ‘foreigner’, I felt sorry for it”, the harsh reply of the French theater director.
“I am president of various juries and have always been welcomed with open arms. It pains me to be regarded now as a bad foreigner who can’t do his job. I have been conducting the Paris Opera, the Vienna Opera and now La Scala for 32 seasons. I have respect for this person who I don’t know but who I don’t think knows my work”, concluded Meyer, who also dwelt on the controversy over the choice to open the season with a Russian opera. “There have not been many controversies apart from those of the Ukrainian consul. We present a masterpiece of art history and it does not mean that it is an endorsement of Russian politics. They are different things,” he said. In November, the Ukrainian consul in Milan, Andrii Kartysh, had written to Meyer, Sala and the president of the Lombardy region Attilio Fontana to ask them to review the programming of La Scala and avoid “any propaganda elements”.
“As you know, I have an extremely clear position on the subject of the invasion of Ukraine”, Giorgia Meloni said today, “but we are not angry with the Russian people, with Russian history, with Russian culture”. added the Prime Minister, present at the premiere together with the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, and the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
“Great Russian culture is an integral part of European culture. It is an element that cannot be deleted. Responsibility for the war must be attributed to the government of that country, certainly not to the Russian people or their culture”, reiterated the head of state, greeted with an ovation.
Regarding the controversy over which Sgarbi had intervened, contesting the cuts to La Scala and to culture in general, the president of the Lombardy Region also spoke out, promising to cover part of the missing contributions to La Scala, but only for this year. “We have tried to collect all the unspent resources with the help of the councilors, in particular two, and we have recovered further resources to be transferred,” said Fontana, after the clash between Mayor Sala and the unions. “Such a major cut at the end of the exercise was fatal. This doesn’t mean there won’t be cuts for 2023, but for ’22 it’s a relief”.
“The unions are right, the halving of funds for theaters by the local authorities is unacceptable”, Sgarbi said yesterday, judging the answer given by Sala to the unions as “inadmissible” (“To the unions who say culture can’t be touched, I I answer: so I touch public transport for the disabled, do I touch kindergartens?”). From the attack on the cuts, Sgarbi then went on to criticize the assignment of tasks to “foreigners”. “It will be appropriate to rethink the relationship between theatre, creativity and the people, and also evaluate the suggestion of a new superintendent”, said the undersecretary, before specifying that he has “nothing against foreigners”. “But as regards two absolute symbols of Italy before the world, two national values, the Uffizi, where an excellent German director also worked, and La Scala, it is not clear why one cannot, indeed one should not, indicate an Italian. I also spoke about it with Riccardo Muti, who firmly wants in Italy the remains of the great Cherubini, buried in Paris, at Père-Lachaise”, added Sgarbi. “For too many years the superintendent of La Scala has been a foreigner. Why not him the foreign mayor, then?”
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