Demonstrate Putin or lose your job: Russian conductor Valery Gergiev given public ultimatum | Valery Gergiev

star captain russia, Valery Gergievwas toppled by his administration over his close ties to Vladimir Putin as a deadline approaches a looming for him to publicly denounce the Russian president or lose another role in his rapidly deteriorating career.

The 68-year-old Russian, an old friend and supporter of Putin, has faced increasing pressure to speak out against Putin’s Russian invasion. Ukraine over the past week. He has been disqualified from shows around the world and faces further professional punishment if he does not condemn Putin’s aggression within the next 24 hours.

On Sunday, his manager, Markus Felsner, announced that he would resign as Gergiev, whom he described as “the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency,” but that he “will not or cannot end his long career publicly.” The declared support for a regime came to commit such crimes.”

“In light of the criminal war waged by the Russian regime against the independent democratic state of Ukraine, and against the open European society as a whole, it has become impossible for us, and obviously unwelcome, to defend the interests of Maestro Gergiev,” Felsner said in a statement, calling it “the saddest.” A day in my career.”

The move by Gergiev’s administration comes before a deadline set on Monday by Munich’s mayor, Dieter Reiter, on Gergiev to publicly denounce the invasion. If Gergiev did not comply, Reiter said he would be fired from his position as chief captain of the Munich Philharmonic.

The Italian press reported that at Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades at La Scala last Wednesday, Gergiev received “light boos”.

As Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine the next day, Milan’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, who is also president of the city’s La Scala opera house, urged Gergiev to condemn the Russian invasion, saying “cooperation will end” if he did not. Release a statement.

La Scala spokesperson Mix On Friday, Gergiev had yet to respond and that he would be removed from the show on March 5 if he did not speak up. “We are still waiting for his answer. If he does not respond to our request, we will have to find another conductor,” the spokesperson said.

The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, which has run the annual Gergiev Festival since 1996, said it would cancel the upcoming festival in September if he did not stop supporting Putin.

Gergiev is the musical director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and a laureate of the Hero of the Labor Party of the Russian Federation. He has been close to Putin since the early 1990s and has publicly supported the president several times, including appearing in a television ad for his 2012 presidential campaign, supporting the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and holding a patriotic concert in the Syrian city of Palmyra, soon. After the Russian air strikes in 2016.

Gergiev was replaced for three performances on the weekend by the Vienna Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, which also canceled two shows where Gergiev conducted the Mariinsky Orchestra in May.

It was also removed from two performances this week by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in Naples, Florida.

Gergiev’s agent in the United States did not respond to requests for comment.