Far-right’ conductor faces backlash over links to Giorgia Meloni
As Beatrice Venezi got ready to perform in Nice, protesters shouted ‘no fascists at the opera’
Adam Sage, Paris
Wednesday January 03 2024, 11.30pm GMT, The Times
An Italian conductor has accused French leftwingers who disrupted a New Year’s Day concert of behaving like the fascists they claimed to be denouncing.
Beatrice Venezi, 33, a rising star of classical music, was speaking after protesters shouted “no fascists at the opera” as she got ready to perform Johann Strauss’s Viennese waltzes in Nice on the French Riviera.
Venezi has become a target for left-wingers in France partly because her father, Gabriele, was a candidate for the right-wing Forza Nuova party and because she is an adviser to Italy’s culture ministry.
In the eyes of French unions that makes her a backer of Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s right-wing prime minister.
But the conductor said the only extremists at the concert were the protesters. “Yes, there were fascists in the [opera house] but they were in the auditorium not on the stage because these were people trying to censor an artist.
“This has nothing to do with art, culture and democracy. It is about judging with prejudice. This is an attempt to manipulate people. I would say to them, ‘You are the fascists and I am a resistant.’ ”
Beatrice Venezi says she never faces protests in Britain or other countries
Venezi denied being politically involved with Meloni’s government, saying she had a technical role to help the renegotiation of contracts for musicians and financial aid for all artists between jobs.
Venezi said she never faced protests in other countries, including in Britain where she conducted outside Buckingham Palace as Andrea Bocelli, the Italian tenor, sang Puccini’s Nessun Dorma at Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee.
However, several dozen people protested outside L’Opéra de Nice when Venezi conducted a performance of Giselle, the French ballet, last month.
A few went a step further for the New Year’s Day concert, holding a protest inside the auditorium. Venezi bowed to them as they were ejected.
It was not the first time Venezi has found herself under fire in France. In April, 30 protesters tried to dissuade opera-goers from attending a performance of Bellini’s La sonnambula in Limoges, central France.
The coalition of unions and associations said: “In a context of normalisation of the extreme-right and of fascism, the invitation from Nice to Mrs Venezi constitutes a political gesture that we contest and firmly denounce.”