Royal College of Music suspends professor who performed in front of bombed-out Mariupol theatre

The Royal College of Music has suspended piano professor Alexander Romanovsky, after he was filmed for on Russian state-controlled media performing in front of Mariupol’s destroyed Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

The RCM has stated that Romanovsky will be subject to a formal disciplinary process on his return to the UK, after appearing in the video alongside Russian violinist, Petr Lundstrem. He also reportedly gave an interview alongside the performance. The video was published on YouTube by Ukrainian blogger Yuriy Podolyaka, who calls Romanovsky an ‘Italian-born but Russian-minded pianist’ in the video caption.

A Russian air strike destroyed the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre on 16 March 2022 with hundreds of civilians in and around the building. An Amnesty International report states that ‘the theatre was clearly recognizable as a civilian object, perhaps more so than any other location in the city’ and ‘the evidence Amnesty International has gathered demonstrates that the attack was a war crime.’

According to Romanovsky’s RCM staff page, he was born in Ukraine in 1984 and lived in Italy ‘since early childhood’. He studied at the Imola Piano Academy and at the Royal College of Music, where he later taught and is currently the artistic director of the Vladimir Krainev Moscow International Piano Competition. He regularly performs with orchestras including Russia’s Mariinsky and Russian National orchestras and St. Petersburg and National philharmonics, as well as collaborating with conductors including Valery Gergiev who was dropped by his managment because of his close ties to Putin.