Juri Kerpatenko, chief conductor of the Mykola Kulish Music and Drama Theater in Cherson, southern Ukraine, since 2004, is dead. Ukrainian and international media, such as the British Guardian, are certain that he was shot through the door of his apartment by the Russian occupying forces. because he is said to have refused to cooperate. In Cherson, currently contested but possibly soon abandoned by the Russians.
Is it really a targeted attack on the Ukrainian cultural world, which the Russians repeatedly mercilessly declare as a target? Of course, nothing precise is known about the true events. The reports contradict each other. Another case that will remain unsolved in the nebulous jungle of propaganda on both sides?
A number of stage performers have already died in Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, which has been raging since February 24: ballet dancers who volunteered for the front, as well as singers and actresses as victims of rockets.
But the case of Kerpatenko, who is not yet internationally known, seems dramatic. He, also an expert on the bayan, the button accordion, is said to have attracted attention with his anti-Russia attitude, which has also been manifested in social media for months. The killing was an act of revenge, an example because, unlike Wilhelm Furtwangler, he refused to cooperate with the new rulers in his city.
According to the reports, Kerpatenko, who was also the head of the Gilea Chamber Orchestra, did not want to conduct a celebratory concert organized by the Russians for the “Day of Music” on October 1st. The lack of understanding was particularly great because Kerpatenko spoke Russian and was shaped by Russian culture. Just like many of his compatriots who, despite this or even more so since the beginning of the war, see themselves as real Ukrainians. As a result, Kerpatenko was repeatedly “visited” by secret service agents who threatened him and finally shot him through the door.
Russian channels are fighting back
“He died without bowing to them,” Ukrainian online media quote their own culture ministry as saying: “There have been a lot of great musicians in the history of the Kherson Philharmonic, but we would definitely be in favor of them going after Yuri Kerpatenko from now on would be named”, was his conclusion, indeed a demand in memory of the conductor. Supposedly some colleagues in the cultural institution have now followed him, the “martyr”, in protest.
Various Russian channels, on the other hand, are vehemently opposed to this allegedly “pure false report”. The conductor had been ill for a long time, they say, and died of “natural causes”. One does not even know the time of his death, sometimes the 13th, sometimes the 14th of October. Russia refers to the local Ukrainian news portal “Chersonline”, where the alleged conductor’s murder was announced on October 12th. Fear, chaos, propaganda, targeted disinformation. It is difficult to get an idea of the true situation at the moment.
At the same time, rumors are circulating that the Russians are requesting eleven employees from every cultural institution in their own country to be sent to the front as part of the mobilization: untrained musicians, authors, and actors, most of whom have previously been released from military service, as cannon fodder. Again, it’s difficult to get reliable confirmation.
What is certain, however, is that in Russia, where earlier, in Stalin’s great war of defense against Hitler, especially the artists, Dmitri Shostakovich, the Leningrad Philharmonic, the Kirov Ballet and many others had brought to safety from the surrounded ex-tsar’s capital behind the Urals , today the culture no longer matters much; Provincial towns like Perm still draw on the artistic potential of the descendants of those who stayed after the war.
War battles are always propaganda battles. Especially in the field of culture. The Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis, who believes he can continue to pursue an unscathed career without taking a political position, is currently experiencing this. With the money from Russian patrons in the East and in the West, who have meanwhile been banned worldwide, with ensembles hurriedly financed from there.
Otherwise, what should one think of the latest Facebook posts from the Mariinsky Theater, where, under the long-outlawed Putin propagandist Valery Gergiev, prominent singers such as bass Ildar Abdrazakov (who, of all things, played Boris Godunov) or the mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk performed for the 60th birthday of the world-class baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who died of a brain tumor in 2017? Should they then simply be allowed to continue singing in the west?
Hvorostovsky, on the other hand, has recorded various, quite nice CDs with Russian army songs, which were received very differently at the time. Can you still hear it now? For example the famous song about the “Schurawli”, the cranes, which has long been read as a pacifist manifesto. Is this propaganda again?
It is becoming increasingly dangerous and complicated to position oneself on what appears to be the right side in times of war. Also for the artists. Who all of a sudden even, if they actually get caught between the war fronts, have to fear for their lives again. At least that is what the death of Yuri Kerpatenko makes clear.