VILNIUS ( LITHUANIA ): Unimpressed by the substitute for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s” Nutcracker”, the mother and her young daughter left at the intermission, a small protest over a decision by the opera house not to perform the Russian composer’s Christmas classic. Egle Brediene, 38, rushing up of Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre this past year in a bid to replace the second dance, which was composed by an Italian, said,” All about” The Nutcracker is much better — the music, the dancing, the the account.”
Lithuania, an unwavering admirer of Ukraine in the warfare waged by Russia, set off Tchaikovsky and the trip preferred two years ago after declaring a “mental isolation” from Russian society. That sparked a few moviegoers ‘ groans, but their anger was mostly subdued until a new government took control of Lithuania this month and a newly installed culture minister declared that he enjoyed hearing Tchaikovsky. There was no cause, the chancellor, Sarunas Birutis, said in an interview, to become “afraid that after watching a Christmas fairy stories we may be pro-Kremlin”. His comment sparked a bitter controversy about whether culture and politics can get sex in a time of conflict, both from Ukrainian supporters and Russian music lovers. Many in the artwork world oppose the prohibition of plays based on their ethnicity, arguing that politics should not be used to divide people because society has the power to join.
It was evident that the Kremlin frequently abused society for political purposes, according to Darius Kuolys, a former of Lithuania’s challenges to break free from the Soviet Union and who served as the country’s first culture minister following the 1990 declaration of independence. However, he continued,” It never occurred to me as a minister to tell people what to watch or listen to.” Despite a bloody crackdown by Soviet forces in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, in Jan 1991, Kuolys did not pause performances of” The Nutcracker” or try to cancel Igor Stravinsky’s” Rite of Spring”. ” We fought Soviet power to get the freedom not to ban things”, said Kuolys, 62.
Simonas Kairys, the culture minister who pushed in 2022 for the quarantine from Russian influence embedded in music, insisted that he had never banned anything and only issued “recommendations” to the national opera house and other state-funded institutions, which promptly pulled” The Nutcracker” and other Russian works.
German composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven were featured in a series of concerts held at Britain’s National Gallery during World War II. This was intended to demonstrate that Britain’s conflict was with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, not with Germany as a country or culture, according to the gallery’s director at the time. However, many in Lithuania and other nations with a long and bitter history of past Russian occupation are concerned that culture can be skewed from politics because of fears of Russia and anger over its invasion of Ukraine. ” In Russia, it’s always been mixed”, said Arunas Gelunas, director of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art. The Kremlin has long used classical culture to avert the world’s attention from its atrocities.
