On December 7, 2024, the Cyprus Daily News published an article titled «Why has Teatro alla Scala become a breeding ground for Russian cultural propaganda?» which posed the next questions:
Why Teatro alla Scala invites the largest number of Putin’s artists and for the third year since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has turned the opening of the season into an arena of Russian cultural propaganda?
What causes such love from the Artistic Director of Teatro alla Scala, Dominique Meyer, for Putin’s propagandist artists?
Is it somehow connected to his Russian girlfriend, self-proclaimed dance expert Anna Olkhovaya, for whose advertisement he used the façade of Teatro alla Scala, removing the flags of Italy and the European Union?
Finally, direct evidence of the cooperation of the Russian «bride» of the director of La Scala with the Russian regime has emerged.
On, December 13, at 6:30 PM, the Consulate General of Russia was to be held a private event dedicated to «Russian Culture and Art» at the International Brera Center in Milan. The event was to be opened by the Russian Consul General, Mr. Dmitry Shtodin.
The event was to be conducted in Russian with guest speaker (surprise, surprise) Anna Olkhovaya, a ballerina and teacher at the Teatro alla Scala Academy, better known in Italy as the «bride» of the theater’s director Dominique Meyer.
As reported by Linkiesta, an independent Italian online newspaper of investigative journalism, members of the board of the International Brera Center have already expressed their strongest disagreement with the event organized by the center’s president without any consultation with the board members.
European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno has also intervened with an official letter sent to the center’s president Stefano Carluccio, urging him to cancel the event. Otherwise, she was invited to report the Center to the competent authorities of the European Commission and request European and national secondary sanctions against the Brera Center.
If the event with the Russian government is not canceled, the Ukrainian community UaMi, the Ponte Atlantico association, Linkiesta, and several board members of the Brera Center have announced that on Friday, December 13, they will gather at the entrance of the Center to welcome the Russian delegation with the notes of the Ukrainian anthem and many Ukrainian and Georgian flags, symbols of the universal struggle against the imperialist regime in Moscow.
UPDATE: On the afternoon of December 13, the Milano Today newspaper reported that an event dedicated to «Russian culture and art» organized by the Russian Consulate at the Brera Center in Milan, where Russian dancer and «bride» of the director of La Scala Theater Anna Olkhovaya was to perform, has been canceled. The threat of secondary sanctions, protests and the loss of municipal premises had a quick result.
Now activists are demanding the resignation of the president of the Brera Center and an investigation into the Teatro alla Scala director’s ties to the Russian regime.
Arts Against Aggression was originated from a protest against Vladimir Spivako’s performance at Harvard University in 2014 and has since grown into an international movement against Russian cultural propaganda. Now Arts Against Aggression sees its mission not only in combating Russian propaganda but also in exposing Western institutions and their leaders who, wittingly or unwittingly, contribute to Russian cultural propaganda.