**Italy Confronted with Calls to Cancel Concert by Pro-Putin Conductor**
The wife of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has urged Italy to cancel a concert by a Russian conductor who has been shunned in the West since the invasion of Ukraine. Yulia Navalnaya wrote in an op-ed for la Repubblica newspaper that Valery Gergiev, the conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra in St Petersburg, is an “intimate friend” of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a cultural ambassador for his administration.
Gergiev is scheduled to perform on July 27 at a festival in the Reggia di Caserta palace near Naples. He will lead a local philharmonic orchestra and soloists from the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra in St Petersburg, which he leads. Navalnaya’s call to cancel the concert comes amid heated debate over Gergiev’s ties to Putin and his failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
**A Divided Italy**
Italy has found itself caught between its own right-wing government’s support for Ukraine and international sanctions against Moscow, and its cultural openness to artists from around the world. The head of the Campania region, which is organizing the festival, said Gergiev had been invited to keep “channels of communication open even with those who do not think like us.” However, this stance has been met with criticism from Navalnaya and others.
“It’s absurd that in 2025, we are still inviting Putin’s accomplices to our festivals,” Navalnaya wrote. Her husband, Alexei Navalny, was a vocal critic of Putin and died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony in 2024 at the age of 47. The Anti-Corruption Foundation, which Navalny founded, has also called on the Italian interior minister to deny Gergiev entry to Italy and on the culture minister and the director of the Reggia di Caserta to cancel the concert.
**A History of Controversy**
Gergiev’s ties to Putin have been a source of controversy for years. In 2022, several Western cultural institutions, including Milan’s La Scala, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, and New York’s Carnegie Hall, severed ties with Gergiev over his failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, as Italy grapples with its own stance on Putin and Russia, Gergiev’s concert has become a lightning rod for debate.
As the world continues to navigate the complex relationships between politics, culture, and power, one thing is clear: the controversy surrounding Valery Gergiev’s concert in Italy is far from over.
