“The war is over” – such a provocative, unrealistic slogan was visible on billboards in the streets of Riga until recently. It was part of “ziedot.lv” fundraising campaign to help Ukraine. However, reading the news about the participation of the popular Latvian opera singer Elīna Garančas in the Vienna opera performance with Anna Netrebko, an opera singer close to Putin, and the exhibition of the porcelain collection of the sanctioned Russian businessman Pyotr Aven held in the Ogre Museum, one gets the impression that we are slowly starting to believe the deliberately misleading advertising slogan about the end of the war.
Talks about an exhibition of Aven’s porcelain collection at the Ogre Museum of History and Art seemed frivolous at first, as it is hard to imagine such an exhibition in a city led by the mayor of the National Union (NA), Egils Helmanis. However, the talk turned out to be fact, and the mayor of Ogre saw no problem with it. It seemed important to him that the private collection of the person subject to sanctions for supporting Putin contains Latvian cultural treasures that should not be hidden. From what Helmanis said to the “Delfi” portal, a message could be indirectly read – those who are against this exhibition are against Latvian cultural values. But not a word about the moral aspects of the “transaction”, not a word about the “transaction” of a person subject to sanctions, because of which the previous Saeima, including NA, adopted the property law, which was intended to deprive Aven of Latvian citizenship. This person is still a citizen of Latvia.
Garanča chose a similar tactic – to answer the question in such a way that no answer was given – who, a few weeks ago, took part in the production of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Aida” at the Vienna Opera House, going on stage with Netrebko. The aforementioned singer of Russian origin with an Austrian passport has been prevented from performing in several world opera houses, including New York’s Metropolitan Opera (the Latvian National Opera and Ballet also canceled last year’s planned Netrebko concert in Riga due to her ambiguous attitude towards Russia’s war in Ukraine).
