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The Toronto Symphony Orchestra a performance of on Wednesday after parting ways with a Ukrainian soloist over concerns that her ribald Twitter commentary had crossed the line into “intolerance.”
The orchestra’s president, Jeff Melanson, said in a telephone interview that his staff had asked Valentina Lisitsa, the pianist who had been scheduled to perform, to explain dozens of inflammatory tweets in which she used vulgar imagery and language to attack Ukrainian nationalists. Ms. Lisitsa, he said, confirmed that she did write the messages posted on her account under the alias , including one that Ukrainian teachers in traditional dress to African tribesmen.
New school year begins in Odessa with teachers forced to wear Ukrainian tribal dress, a truly European custom :)
— NedoUkraïnka (@ValLisitsa)
A column by Robert Mackey.
Ukrainian Internet activists, who call Ms. Lisitsa a supporter of Russian-backed separatists, celebrated the orchestra’s decision. They also pointed to a number of other tweets in which she seemed to echo Kremlin propaganda that Ukraine has been in the grip of bloodthirsty “Nazis” since protests toppled the pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, last year.
If anybody is wondering what wrote to make show her the door >>
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress)
THE GODS OF MAIDAN ARE THIRSTY AND DEMAND NEW HUMAN SACRIFICES IN ORDER TO BE APPEASED.
— NedoUkraïnka (@ValLisitsa)
Pictures speak louder than words.
— NedoUkraïnka (@ValLisitsa)
French "comedian" Dieudonne show closed for inverted Nazi salute. Ukrainian Maidan comedy show goes on. EU applauds.
— NedoUkraïnka (@ValLisitsa)
Another typical tweet. She has right of free speech, but she should not complain about the consequences.
— Thomas C. Theiner (@noclador)
Mr. Melanson said that the orchestra had tried to resolve the matter quietly by finding a replacement for Ms. Lisitsa as pianist late last week and paying her fee, but she went public on Monday, defending her right to use “satire and hyperbole” in online debates over the war in Ukraine. She also asked her fans to speak out against “censorship” by demanding that she be allowed to perform as scheduled.
Dear friends, I need your help! Please make a stand with me for the freedom of speech!
— NedoUkraïnka (@ValLisitsa)
, Ms. Lisitsa insisted that the only aim of her Twitter feed was “to get the other side of the story heard, the one you never see in the mainstream media — the plight of my people, the good and bad things that were happening in Ukraine.”
Family hiding from bombs - one of last photos by Italian journalist Andrea Ronchelli killed by Ukrainian military "
— NedoUkraïnka (@ValLisitsa)
The pianist attributed the backlash against her to what she called the success of her efforts to expose the suffering caused by Ukrainian government forces and the anti-Russian bias of Western news media reports.
“I translated news stories from Ukrainian language websites, I translated eyewitness accounts of atrocities,” she said. “I became really good in unmasking fakes published by Western media in order to make one side of the civil war look whiter and softer than Easter bunny, and another — as sub-humans, not worthy of mercy, the ‘collateral damage.’ ”
I just want peace. Today cancer hospital was bombed out. Along the road 9 wheelchair-bound people killed. That's today. via "
— NedoUkraïnka (@ValLisitsa)
Her fans and supporters of the rebel cause in Ukraine responded by flooding the orchestra’s Facebook page and Twitter mentions with outrage and heckling the local pianist lined up to replace Ms. Lisitsa, Stewart Goodyear.
It seems supports fascists and have banned from playing after she condemned Nazis. SHAMEFUL!!!
— MADE IN RUSSIA (@oksana_ermel)
Writing on Facebook late Tuesday, Mr. Goodyear explained that he had decided to withdraw as a result of the “social media frenzy” surrounding the engagement.
“Words of bile and hatred were hurled in my direction,” he wrote. “Suddenly I was accused of supporting censorship, and bullied into declining this engagement. What started out as one of the happiest moments of my life turned into a shattering display of mob hysteria.”
“With all due respect to the pianist who I was going to replace, one must own one’s opinions and words,” Mr. Goodyear added. “Her words offended many people who perceived her as pro-violence and anti-love.”
Ms. Lisitsa, a naturalized American citizen who moved to the United States in 1991, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to an independent Ukraine, embodies some of the complexity of Ukrainian identity politics. While calling herself “an ethnic Ukrainian,” as the daughter of a Ukrainian father and a Russian-Polish mother, she grew up speaking Russian and considers the use of force by the government in Kiev against Russian-backed separatists an outrage. She named her Twitter feed NedoUkraïnka, or SubUkrainian, after reading that the post-revolutionary prime minister in Kiev had referred to Russian-backed rebels as “subhumans.”
We have Ukrainian prime-minister on a record pledging to "exterminate subhumans". We also have Justice minister talking "filtration camps"
— NedoUkraïnka (@ValLisitsa)
Speaking by telephone from a hotel outside Toronto on Tuesday, Ms. Lisitsa said that she hoped to find a site to perform for her fans, even without the orchestra. As to who, exactly, her accusers were, she said, “I am in the dark.” The orchestra, she said, had refused her request to meet with anyone offended by her Twitter commentary in an attempt to defuse the tension.
Ms. Lisitsa, who now lives in Paris, said that her use of vulgar illustrations on Twitter was partly inspired by French satire. She said that one of the tweets the orchestra had particularly objected to was a scatological cartoon she had adapted from Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly, to illustrate, in crude terms, the idea that the Western media were being fed lies about Russian involvement in Ukraine concocted by Ukrainian intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency.
She also argued that she had been singled out by supporters of the government in Kiev for her role in helping to expose the neo-Nazi sympathies of some of the Ukrainian volunteers fighting Russian-backed separatists. After Elle magazine published a photo spread late last year featuring several young Ukrainian women in camouflage, Ms. Lisitsa discovered that the woman on the title page, Vita Zaverukha, had previously posted images of herself on social media making the Nazi salute and wearing a swastika.
finds a perfect specimen of "Ukrainian": Nazi who rants about "Yids" when not attacking local businesses.
— NedoUkraïnka (@ValLisitsa)
Care to comment the article including little nazi heroin?
— Přemysl (@Premysl_II)
Ms. Lisitsa also suggested that Ukrainian activists had been angered by her impassioned defense of another artist, the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, who was criticized for expressing sympathy for civilians in Donetsk, a separatist-controlled city in eastern Ukraine.
In December, Ms. Netrebko — more than $18,000 — to the opera house in Donetsk, and was photographed handing the check to , a separatist politician, at a news conference in Russia. She then posed for photographs with him while holding a separatist flag.
Анна Нетребко приняла знамя Новороссии!
— Олег Царев (@OlegTsarov)
Although the money reportedly , Ukrainian activists tried, and failed, to persuade the Metropolitan Opera over the donation. In a statement rejecting the request, a representative of the New York opera house wrote that “the Met does not have to be in agreement with the personal views of the artists who perform on its stage.”
We got a response from the . They are proud to host terrorist sympathizer
— ArtAgainstAggression (@ST0P_PUTIN)
As Ms. Netrebko was being showered with applause after performing in the title role of Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” in late January, a Ukrainian protester, , carrying a placard calling her and the conductor for the performance, Valery Gergiev, “active contributors to Putin’s war against Ukraine.”