Bogdan Plish, director of the choir of the National Opera of Ukraine: "A people without culture is easy to conquer"

On Thursday, July 14, at the end of the press conference in which Riccardo Muti presented his concert in the municipality of Loreto, within

of the Ravenna Festival, the director of the choir, Bogdan Plish, burst into tears.

"I had read the news of the bombing of civilians in Vinnytsia, where there were several child victims, such as a four-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was in her stroller with her mother, and I fell apart," he explains with sadness.

Plish (Mukachevo, Ukraine, 45 years old) is, since 2007, the director of the choir of the National Opera of Ukraine, which shortly after adopted the name of the poet Taras Shevchenko.

In 2018 he collaborated with the Ravenna Festival, from kyiv, where Muti directed several Verdi pages in the Santa Sofía square, and later visited the Italian city to direct music by his compatriot Valentin Silvéstrov.

But his return to Ravenna in April was very different.

“The 2018 thing was an artistic project, but this now has been a war evacuation,

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The Ravenna Festival, at the initiative of its director, Cristina Mazzavillani Muti (wife of the director) welcomed 64 Ukrainians from the kyiv Opera.

"26 members of the choir came, at least 26 other ballet dancers and three musicians from the orchestra along with their families," she clarifies.

Currently, the dancers are touring various countries —this July they performed in several Spanish cities—, while the choir and instrumentalists have given almost fifty concerts in Ravenna and other Italian cities.

"Our performances raise money for the military and help spread awareness of our culture."

We comment on the pieces that they performed, on July 14, during the Muti concert in the Plaza del Santuario de la Santa Casa de Loreto.

For this reason, after a traditional Ukrainian song from the 13th century, entitled

, they performed

, by the composer Hanna Havrylec, who died at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

A composition with clear orthodox echoes that was sung by a soprano soloist together with her little daughter and to which the choir dressed in traditional costumes responded.

But the most emblematic piece included in the concert was the beautiful

, by the Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk, in an arrangement for oboe, violin and bandura [Ukrainian plucked string instrument] that was accompanied by a couple of classical dancers.

“Skoryk, who passed away two years ago, composed this piece as part of his soundtrack for the film

(1982), but it has long since become a symbol against Russian oppression of Ukraine," he says.

The day after this conversation, Plish conducted a concert at the San Francisco Basilica, next to Dante's tomb, which included choral works by Maxim Berezovsky, a Ukrainian contemporary of Mozart who died in 1777 at the age of 31.

He is a composer linked to the tsarist court in Saint Petersburg, trained with Father Martini in Bologna and author of the first Russian symphony, a score rediscovered in the Vatican Apostolic Library twenty years ago.

But he is not a Russian composer, but a Ukrainian, born in Hlújiv, a city located in the north of the country, which was captured by the Russians in February and recovered in April by the Ukrainians.

The soprano Svitlana Semenyshyna with her young daughter Milana Lomanova during the performance of 'Prayer to the Virgin Mary', by Hanna Havrylec.Marco Borrelli

Plish insistently vindicates the Ukrainian musicians who, like Berezovsky, have been assimilated by the Russians.

He remembers the names of the composer Sergei Prokofiev, the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, the pianist Sviatoslav Richter and the violinist David Óistraj.

“The objective of our concerts is to make visible our culture, which defines us as a people, because a people without culture is easy to conquer and becomes part of the one that conquers them”.

But this defense of what is Ukrainian has been done at the cost of removing what is Russian.

In fact, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture proposed a few weeks ago to remove the name of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky from the kyiv Conservatory, where Plish himself graduated.

“Like so many Ukrainian musicians, I agree with this name change.

And unlike what happens with the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan or the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Tchaikovsky had no relationship with kyiv and his name was imposed, in 1940, during the Soviet era”, he replies.

He comments on the policy of the former USSR, which consisted of eliminating all Ukrainian identity traits and imposing centralist models, such as the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

“For me, an ideal name for the kyiv Conservatory would be that of the composer Mykola Lysenko, a fundamental figure in Ukrainian music, who obtained the necessary financing so that it could be founded.”

which consisted of eliminating all Ukrainian identity traits and imposing centralist models, such as the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

“For me, an ideal name for the kyiv Conservatory would be that of the composer Mykola Lysenko, a fundamental figure in Ukrainian music, who obtained the necessary financing so that it could be founded.”

which consisted of eliminating all Ukrainian identity traits and imposing centralist models, such as the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

“For me, an ideal name for the kyiv Conservatory would be that of the composer Mykola Lysenko, a fundamental figure in Ukrainian music, who obtained the necessary financing so that it could be founded.”

From left, violinist Oleksandra Zinchenko, Taras Stoliar, bandura, and oboist Dmytro Hudyma, along with Ukrainian Opera ballet dancers Tatiana Lyozova and Yaroslav Tkachuka, during a performance of Skoryk's 'Melody' in front of the Sanctuary of the Holy House of Loreto. Marco Borrelli

But the director of the choir of the National Opera of Ukraine has nothing against Tchaikovsky's music.

“I think he is a great composer, without a doubt, and before the war I conducted many of his operas together with those of other Russian composers.

The fact that we have eliminated Russian music from our repertoire does not mean that we do not admire it”, he remarks.

And he justifies this symbolic measure in the war and affects the propagandistic use that the Russian Federation makes of its own culture to create adhesions.

"It is completely impossible for me to identify Russian culture in the atrocities committed by the Russian military against defenseless citizens in my country, such as the bombing of Vinnytsia," he underlines, visibly affected.

The National Opera of Ukraine raised the curtain again on May 21,

despite the fact that part of their stable bodies are still abroad or fighting on the front lines.

She did it with a function

, by Rossini, which was followed by another by the aforementioned composer Mykola Lysenko.

"But it has been reopened with special measures that limit the capacity to 300 spectators in the stalls, since it is the number that can be evacuated in the basement, along with the artists and workers, if the air raid sirens sound," he explains. .

Then he talks about returning without question.

“I have my family with me and we are fine in Ravenna, where they have received us with great affection, but I can't wait to return to kyiv”.

And he ends by insisting on the importance of supporting Ukraine in these difficult times: “People in the world must understand that our war is not against a person or a country, but against evil, which will continue to cause pain and will not stop. ”.

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