A year-old Facebook comment may cost opera singer Yekaterina Abdullina her job.
Abdullina, a singer of the National Opera of Ukraine, participated in a Facebook discussion about the Ukrainian and Russian schools in Kyiv on Aug. 13, 2012. The singer wrote that she had sent her child to a Russian-speaking school and “had never regretted it.”
“Parents and kids there are very different from redneck Ukrainian-speaking schools,” she wrote in Russian with grammatical mistakes, adding that she was happy that her kid “studies among morally healthy children, not among rednecks.”
In the same discussion the singer wrote that she “wouldn’t bear the “mova” (Ukrainian language) at her home.”
Abdullina, 36, has been a soprano singer in the National Opera of Ukraine since 1998. She is one of the lead singers and stars as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” and as Rosina in Gioachino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.”
A YouTube video shows Abdullina performing the song “Plyve Moya Dusha” (My Soul Flows) by Mykhailo Zherbin in Ukrainian.
Abdullina’s comments were noticed by Ukrainian media on Sept. 6, and have quickly sparked a scandal. Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture has since taken notice, reacting with a statement.
“It is shameful that the Ministry of Culture employs (through The National Opera) a person with so little personal culture,” reads the statement.
The ministry expects the singer to apologize publicly to all Ukrainian citizens, whose language she insulted.
Another reaction came from the radical Bratstvo party. On the afternoon of Sept. 6, Bratstvo activists threw mayonnaise at Abdullina, who was giving an interview to a TV station outside the National Opera on Volodymyrska Street in central Kyiv. The video shows Abdullina trying to clean mayonnaise from her long black hair.
In an explanation written on her Facebook page, Abdullina said that she is “not against the Ukrainian language” and that her words were misinterpreted.
“After saying such things she should just resign,” National Opera chief director Anatoliy Soloviyanenko told Texty.org.ua.
Kyiv Post editor Olya Rudenko can be reached at [email protected].
