BERLIN (AP) — A Russian baritone who was due to sing the lead role in Richard Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman" when the Bayreuth opera festival opens next week withdrew from the event Saturday after it emerged that he once had Nazi-related symbols tattooed on his body.
A German television program broadcast
Friday showed old footage of a bare-chested Evgeny Nikitin playing
drums in a rock band, in which a swastika tattoo partly covered by
another symbol could be seen. The festival said Nikitin made his
decision amid questions from a German newspaper about the
significance of some of his tattoos.
Organizers made Nikitin, 38, aware of
“the connotations of these symbols in connection with German
history,” said a statement from the festival in Bayreuth, in the
southeastern state of Bavaria. It added that his decision to pull out
is “in line with the festival leadership’s consistent rejection
of any form of Nazi ideas.”
The festival is currently led by the
composer’s great-granddaughters, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina
Wagner.
The Nazi past is a sensitive issue for
the Bayreuth festival, which was founded by Richard Wagner in 1872.
Winifred Wagner, who headed the
Bayreuth festival under Nazi rule, was a strong admirer of Adolf
Hitler. During her reign, Hitler not only helped fund the festival
but was allowed to meddle in artistic decisions.
In a brief statement released through
the festival, Nikitin said that he got the tattoos in his youth.
“It was a major mistake in my
life, and I wish I had never done it,” he said. “I was not
aware of the extent of the confusion and hurt that these symbols
would cause, particularly in Bayreuth and in the context of the
festival’s history.”
Displaying Nazi symbols is a criminal
offense in Germany.
This year’s festival is due to open on
Wednesday with “The Flying Dutchman,” and it wasn’t
immediately clear who might replace Nikitin.
The festival said the director, Jan
Philipp Gloger, believes that the “artistic damage to the
production is immense” and it may not be possible to repair it
entirely before next week’s premiere.
