UPDATE: The email has been sent. Here's the list of selected signatures.
Open Letter to contrast Valery Gergiev's performance in Caserta
Memorial Italia has launched a petition against holding the first European concert of Valery Gergiev — a long-time supporter of Putin, who has repeatedly participated in concerts supporting Russia’s violent foreign policy. The concert is scheduled for July 27 in Caserta.
The petition will be addressed to Ursula von der Leyen and Vincenzo De Luca — the Italian politician organizing the event. Its demands include cancelling the concert, establishing a committee to monitor the infiltration of pro‑Russian propaganda into the EU, and implementing initiatives supporting peace through art.
To sign the letter, please fill the form at the link.
Here is the text of this letter:
To the President of the European Commission Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen
To the President of Campania Mr. Vincenzo De Luca
We, the undersigned, write to express our deepest concern over the scheduled performance of Valery Gergiev — a public and official supporter of Vladimir Putin — at the Un’estate da Re festival in Caserta, Italy, on the 27th of July 2025.
This concert, subsidized by public funds, marks Gergiev’s symbolic return to Europe’s cultural arena. It is not a neutral act. It is a political gesture — one that risks legitimizing the regime he represents and the violence it continues to unleash.
Our request has nothing censorious in itself. We are not asking to silence art, but to remove visibility from a figure who is openly conniving and complicit with a political line that Europe, on the other hand, abhors and contrasts.
Gergiev has consistently aligned himself with the Kremlin. He is not only an artist — he is a visible agent of cultural propaganda for a regime internationally accused of war crimes.
After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, major cultural institutions across Europe and North America have severed ties with him. His removal from the Munich Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and other leading stages was not censorship — it was a moral stand against war propaganda cloaked in cultural prestige. Because of Gergiev’s stance on Mr. Putin and his politics, personal sanctions against him were recently adopted by Canada.
This return on a prestigious stage in the heart of Europe, thanks to the support of public institutions, signals a dangerous shift. It normalizes an effective weapon in hybrid war: cultural propaganda. As widely documented, the Russian regime makes extensive use of such events internally to justify its aggression against Ukraine and its war against Western values. On the other hand, such events have a detrimental effect on the European Union, as they discredit the same countries and institutions that have been engaged for years in a longstanding fight against the threat posed by the Russian regime on European values, culture, and security.
Art is never apolitical in times of war. Cultural spaces are not neutral zones; they shape public memory, values, and legitimacy. Hosting Gergiev while war crimes continue — while Ukrainian cities are bombed and civilians are killed and deported — turns theaters into platforms for whitewashing brutality.
For all of the above reasons, we call for:
• The cancellation of the 27th of July 2025 event in Caserta.
• A transparent investigation by the European Commission into the use of public funds, including EU funding, for cultural events featuring Valery Gergiev or other active supporters of the Russian regime.
• The launch of initiatives by the European Commission aimed at promoting a culture of peace through art, as a response to the use of culture as a propaganda tool by the Russian.