A deliberate classical music live performance in Italy, that includes a Russian conductor recognized to be an outdated pal and vocal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is sparking furor after the spouse of late Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny urged Italian authorities to cancel it.

Star conductor Valery Gergiev is booked to carry out with members of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Orchestra on July 27 on the Reggia di Caserta palace, close to Naples, as a part of the Un’Property da RE pageant. The live performance would mark Gergiev’s first efficiency within the West since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Navalny’s spouse Yulia Navalnaya, in an op-ed revealed on Tuesday by La Repubblica newspaper, stated “there’s a large downside with the pageant,” urging organizers to cancel the occasion and calling Gergiev a “aware and energetic confederate of Putin’s regime.”

Alexei Navalny, who was Putin’s fiercest opponent, died in 2023 in a penal colony above the Arctic Circle. His supporters have accused the Kremlin of killing him, although Russian authorities deny this.

Gergiev, 72, couldn’t be instantly reached for remark.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Gergiev was fired as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic and was compelled to cancel engagements at La Scala in Italy in addition to Carnegie Corridor and different venues within the U.S. He has not carried out within the West since. Gergiev has as a substitute led a number of excursions with the Mariinsky Orchestra in China for the reason that invasion.

Italy’s tradition minister, Alessandro Giuli, has issued a press release expressing concern in regards to the Gergiev-conducted live performance, however has stopped in need of asking organizers to cancel it.

The fitting-wing minister stated the live performance might “flip a high-level however objectively controversial and divisive musical occasion right into a sounding board for Russian propaganda.” However Giuli added that regional authority of the Southern Italian area of Campania, which organized and paid for the Un’Property da RE pageant, is free to decide on what occasions they will host.

In the meantime, the center-left governor of Campania, Vincenzo De Luca, has rejected calls to cancel the live performance, telling Italian reporters that blocking cultural exchanges “doesn’t assist peace, however solely serves to gas the rivers of hatred.”

Gergiev has supported Putin on many events, together with showing in a TV advert for his 2012 presidential marketing campaign, signing a petition supporting the 2014 annexation of Crimea and conducting a patriotic live performance within the Syrian metropolis of Palmyra in 2016, shortly after Russian airstrikes there.