For a moment I thought someone had spiked my tea with LSD. With escalating levels of disbelief, I read Melanie McDonagh’s bizarre account of last Thursday’s protest at the Barbican against the pro-Putin Russian conductor Valery Gergiev. Then, as her article became ever-more divorced from reality, I wondered if perhaps she had been the victim of an acid prankster.
Melanie is usually a fine writer. What prompted her to scribble such tosh? She lambasts the ‘barracking’ and ‘bullying’ of Gergiev, describing him as a ‘Russian composer’. Actually, he’s a conductor and he was nowhere in sight that evening. We were on the pavement outside, not in the ‘concert hall’.
It was a small, good-natured, peaceful protest. We held placards and waved sparklers. Hardly a menacing mob. True, we shouted ‘Shame’ and ‘Gergiev! Stop supporting Putin. Stop supporting tyranny.’ But does this really amount to ‘bullying’ the maestro? It was certainly not the ‘sustained and disruptive harassment’ alleged by Melanie.
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