While the concert led by the conductor close to the Italian extreme right Beatrice Venezi had begun, the police expelled anti-fascist activists and prevented one of our journalists from doing his work.
It is a tradition at the Nice opera (Alpes-Maritimes). Every year, the Philharmonic Orchestra offers a performance, this year dedicated to the waltzes of Vienna. At the helm: conductor Beatrice Venezi.
A concert which was disrupted this Monday by anti-fascist activists. In the audience, on the penultimate balcony, three people, two men and a woman, unfurled a banner on which was written in red and black: “No fascists at the opera. No opera for fascists“.
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The 2024 New Year’s concert at the Nice Opera disrupted by anti-fascists • ©Séverine Neuquelman/FTV
The activists then folded their banner before sitting down again. On stage, conductor Beatrice Venezi smiled before taking over the direction of the orchestra.
This situation created a certain tension on site. While the three spectators are arrested and checked in the opera hall, a policewoman becomes annoyed. “Aren’t you taking pictures?“, she told a journalist from France 3 Côte d’Azur present on site as part of a report. The latter was then removed, under threat of “a good kick” by the police.
Three people were arrested by the police after unfurling a banner “no fascists at the opera” during the New Year’s concert of the Nice Philharmonic Orchestra. • © Ali BENBOURNANE/FTV
The announcement of the arrival of the thirty-year-old Italian chef in Nice caused a collective of associations to react last summer. He asked Mayor Christian Estrosi and the general director of the Opera to “cancel event“, seeing a “trivialization of the far right and fascism“.
Italian conductor Beatrice Venezi, at the Nice Opera. • © Séverine Neuquelman/FTV
Because, in Italy, Beatrice Venezi is close to the extreme right: she is a “music” advisor to the government of Giogia Meloni and the daughter of a former leader of the neofascist party Forza Nuova. Faced with the controversy, the director of the Opera responded that “music having the power to transcend divisions and bring individuals together around a common experience, it is essential to separate art from politics“.
This is not the first time that the conductor’s visit to France has been disrupted. In April, around fifty people demonstrated against his presence at the Limoges opera.
(With Ali Benbournane, in Nice)
2024-01-02 00:43:28
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