Close to Vladimir Putin, the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev was expelled from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music because of the war in Ukraine, we learned Thursday from the institution.
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Through its close alliance with the Russian government which today is attacking Ukraine, we find that it is acting in a way that makes it impossible for us not to distance ourselves
," Susanna Rydén told AFP. , President of the Academy.
We consider this to be unacceptable and the Academy does not want to be associated with it.
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Member since 2011, Valery Gergiev had an honorary position of foreign member within the prestigious Scandinavian institution.
This is one of the ten Royal Swedish Academies in the same way as the one awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Russian conductor had already been declared persona non grata by several Western concert halls, from Germany where he had been sacked from the direction of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, via France and Italy.
In March, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris had thus canceled the arrival of the superstar.
On the same day, La Scala in Milan also excluded Valery Gergiev from performances of an opera by Tchaikovsky, after his refusal to distance himself from Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, several institutions of the cultural world have started a series of deprogramming of Russian artists.
In the world of classical music, superstar soprano Anna Netrebko, criticized for her supposed complacency towards President Vladimir Putin, had also been sidelined from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
On March 30, she had expressly condemned the war against Ukraine, which had earned her this time being withdrawn from the poster in her own country.
In their country, Russian artists have been called upon to display their patriotism or, failing that, to remain silent, and in Western countries, to publicly distance themselves from the military operation and the Russian regime.