A cultural casualty of the war in Ukraine: ‘The Nutcracker’

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Unimpressed by the substitute for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker,” the mother and her young daughter left at the intermission, a small protest over a decision by the opera house not to perform the Russian composer’s Christmas classic.

“Everything about ‘The Nutcracker’ is much better — the music, the dance, the story,” said Egle Brediene, 38, hurrying out of the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theater this past week after the first act of a replacement ballet composed by an Italian.

Lithuania, an unwavering supporter of Ukraine in the war waged by Russia, set aside Tchaikovsky and the holiday favorite two years ago after declaring a “mental quarantine” from Russian culture in a gesture of solidarity against the aggressor.

That stirred grumbling by theatergoers, but their annoyance had largely calmed — until a new government took power in Lithuania this month and a newly installed culture minister announced that he liked listening to Tchaikovsky. There was no reason, the minister, Sarunas Birutis, said in a radio interview, to be “afraid that after watching a Christmas fairy tale we will become pro-Kremlin.”

His remarks prompted fury from ardent supporters of Ukraine and applause from lovers of Russian music, igniting a bitter debate, largely one between generations, about whether culture and politics can be separated at a time of war.

Many in the art world oppose banning works on the basis of their nationality, believing that culture has the power to unite and should not be contaminated by politics.

Darius Kuolys, a veteran of Lithuania’s struggles to break free from the Soviet Union who was the first culture minister after a 1990 declaration of independence, said it was obvious that the Kremlin often exploited culture for political ends. But he added, “It never occurred to me as a minister to tell people what to watch or listen to.”

Despite a bloody crackdown by Soviet forces in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, in January 1991, Kuolys did not pause performances of “The Nutcracker” or try to cancel Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”

“We fought Soviet power to get the freedom not to ban things,” said Kuolys, 62, now a professor of Lithuanian literature at Vilnius University.

Lithuania’s culture is so intertwined with Russia, he added (noting that Stravinsky’s family traced its roots to the country), that proscribing Russian artists and their works would “cause great damage to ourselves”

Simonas Kairys, the culture minister who pushed in 2022 for the quarantine from Russian influence embedded in music, insisted that he had never banned anything and only issued “recommendations” to the national opera house and other state-funded institutions, which promptly pulled “The Nutcracker” and other Russian works.

“They had a choice — there was no decree from me,” said Kairys, 40. “They just had an understanding of the situation.” He added: “When you are at war, you have to choose the right side. There is no middle.”

During World War II, Britain’s National Gallery put on a series of concerts featuring German composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven. The director of the gallery at the time said that this was to show that Britain’s fight was with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, not with Germany as a nation or culture.

Fear of Russia and fury over its invasion of Ukraine, however, have led many in Lithuania and other countries with a long and bitter history of past Russia occupation to doubt that culture can be disentangled from politics.

“In Russia, it’s always been mixed,” said Arunas Gelunas, director of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art and a proponent of pausing performances and exhibitions by Russian artists. “The Kremlin has been using classical culture to distract the eyes of the world from the atrocities that it is exercising today.”

Russia has created an image of itself as the pinnacle of sophisticated culture, an impression that is firmly embedded in the Western world, he added.

“Today, when Ukrainians are still being tortured and raped and killed as we speak, I would rather not go to see ‘The Nutcracker’ in the opera or elsewhere,” said Gelunas, who traveled to Ukraine to help evacuate 800 pieces of art from museums there to Lithuania.

Ukrainian officials and activists who want to “decolonize” culture share that view, pushing for the exclusion of Russian performers, filmmakers and other artists from the West no matter what their political leanings. Some see all Russians and their cultural heritage as irredeemably tainted by imperial thinking, a view heavily influenced by postcolonial studies in American academia.

For lovers of “The Nutcracker,” a staple of the Christmas repertoire in Lithuania for generations, Tchaikovsky — who lived from 1840 to 1893 — has nothing to do with the Kremlin or Russian atrocities in Ukraine and should be spared from what they see as virtue signaling by politicians.

Tchaikovsky, said Tatiana Kuznetsova, 67, whose father was Ukrainian and mother Russian, “belongs to the world, not to Russia.” Waiting to enter the Vilnius opera house this past week, she reminisced about taking her children and grandchildren to watch “The Nutcracker” at Christmas before it was pulled.

“It is a classic,” she said. “I am a patriot of Lithuania, but art and sport should not be mixed with politics.”

Brediene, who left the replacement show at the intermission, said that the alternative, “Les Millions d’Arlequin,” whose music was composed by Riccardo Drigo, a lesser-known Italian musician, had interesting costumes. But she said it fell far short of performances she had seen of “The Nutcracker.”

Audrius Kundrotas, the deputy marketing manager for Lithuania’s opera house, acknowledged that audiences might prefer “The Nutcracker” to its little-known substitute. “You can’t compare them,” he conceded. “It’s nice but different.”

Kundrotas said that “The Nutcracker” could be revived after the war stops, but that until that happens, there were no plans for Tchaikovsky ballets to be performed.

“It’s painful, maybe, not to show this performance,” he said, “but our position is stated very firmly.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company