Environmental activists sprayed paint at the entrance to La Scala, Milan’s prestigious opera house, on Wednesday, the latest in a series of protests to alert the public to climate change.
Five activists from the Última Generación movement intervened at dawn, according to an AFP photographer, when the focus of the peninsula’s media is focused on the famous opera ahead of the gala evening scheduled for the opening of the season with the premiere of “Boris Godunov”.
Two people unfurled banners reading “Last Generation: No Gas and No Carbon”.
“We have decided to spray La Scala with paint to ask the politicians who will attend tonight’s performance to stop doing ostrich politics and intervene to save the population,” Última Generación explained in a press release.
“Government Indifference”
The Head of Government Giorgia Meloni, the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen are among the many personalities expected at this gala evening.
Police quickly arrived at the scene, where the sidewalk was dotted with hot pink, electric blue and turquoise paint sprays, and the activists were arrested. A cleaning crew from La Scala then hosed down the building.
“The economic and environmental situation worsens day by day”, Last Generation continues, referring to “the tragic situation of the Italian people, affected by the Ischia cataclysm and betrayed by the government’s indifference”.
A landslide, triggered by very heavy rains on November 26 on the island of Ischia, killed 12 people.
Many jobs directed
In recent weeks, Next Generation activists have attacked works of art in European museums during protests that are intended, they say, not to damage the works, but to draw attention to the environmental disaster.
They aimed for masterpieces like the pearl girl by Johannes Vermeer in a museum in the Netherlands, death and life by Gustav Klimt in the Leopold Museum in Vienna or the sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh at the National Gallery in London.
Last month, at a show in Milan, he also floured a car repainted by Andy Warhol.
Source: BFM TV
