MACERATA – The symphonic concert with Valery Gergiev at the head of the Mariinsky Orchestra has been axed from the city's Opera Festival due to the war in Ukraine, as told by Ansa news agency. The concert of Russian maestros had been scheduled to close the 2022 edition of the Macerata Opera Festival at the Sferisterio August 20.

 Though the new musical director of the Macerata Opera event, Donato Renzetti, said that “music has no political colour,” the festival decided to cancel the Gergiev concert featuring one of the oldest musical ensembles in Russia after numerous other performances by Russian artists around the world were and continue to be called off as a gesture of protest against Putin’s regime. 

 The artistic director of festival, Paolo Pinamonti announced the decision during the presentation of the 2022 program. "It is evident that in the face of the current dramatic situation and Russia's violent aggression against Ukraine by Putin, with the suffering of the Ukrainian populations to whom all our solidarity goes, of the soldiers and the dead, this concert is inevitably suspended" said Pinamonti.

 Other important symphonic concerts will take place as a part of music festival as planned, including Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with Zubin Mehta in Beethoven's Ninth and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia with Myung Whun Chung in Beethoven's Sixth and Seventh. 

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