Mariinsky soloist explains the significance of his scandalous tattoo

Mariinsky Theater soloist Yevgeny Nikitin refused to participate in the German Bayreuth festival because the media attributed Nazi views to him because of the presence of a swastika tattoo on his body.

Nikitin refutes such information. Moreover, he is skeptical of National Socialism, since both of his grandfathers died in the war.

The artist told the true meaning of his wearable images. On one side of the chest is an image of Scandinavian runes. And on the other side is an eight-pointed star, and in the center is a coat of arms. The singer says that information about the swastika appeared even before all work on the tattoo was completed. Of course, according to media assumptions, the singer was not going to make a coat of arms in the center of the star, but, apparently, he had to.

It is interesting that earlier Yevgeny Nikitin made excuses in a completely different way. Then he still honestly admitted that the tattoo was done out of stupidity, even in his youth, when he was a member of a heavy metal group, and such tattoos were part of a subculture.

It is noteworthy that the Wagner festival was often visited by the leaders of the Third Reich. Even Adolf Hitler revered Wagner’s work. And Wagner himself has repeatedly expressed his anti-Semitic thoughts.

At that time, the famous writer Thomas Mann gave the comic name to this festival - “Hitler’s Court Theater”.

Therefore, it is not clear why the media so categorically reacted to the swastika on Nikitin’s body.

And the singer himself was still deceiving, because his biography also touches on this topic: according to the Mariinsky Theater website, Wagner’s operas have a special place in the soloist’s repertoire: he sang in the performances “Nuremberg Mastersingers”, “Parsifal”, “Gold of the Rhine” and "Siegfried".

Elena Belskaya