Valery Gergiev Keeps Praising Putin
I tend not to pay much attention to the political opinions of artists: otherwise I couldn’t ever listen to Wagner or Frank Sinatra. It does pain me, however, to hear conductor Valery Gergiev (pictured) once again praise Russia’s strongman President, Vladimir Putin, because he supposedly keeps Russia from disintegrating. Europe and North America have plenty of problems, God knows, but they aren’t throwing a lot of people in prison right now, or putting them on trial, for expressing anti-government opinions. Putin is.
