Georgian soprano ‘replaced’ in Belgium as her story comes under scrutiny at home.

La Monnaie Opera in Brussels is reported to have replaced Georgian soprano Tamar Iveri, due to appear in their production of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera next year in light of the furore surrounding comments she, or her husband, made last year in a letter posted on her Facebook page. In the letter she described LGBT people as “deviants” and suggests that homosexuality is part of the “faecal mass” being foisted on Georgia by the West. New information, meanwhile, has come to light challenging the account that Iveri gave of the affair on her Facebook page yesterday.

The letter, bearing Tamar Iveri’s name and addressed to the then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, was dated May 18, 2013 and was a response to the President’s condemnation of an attack by Orthodox Christians on a LGBT parade in the Georgian capital Tiblisi the previous day, May 17. According to Ms Iveri yesterday, she had written an original letter, concerned that “on the 17th of May 2013 a gay parade was supposed to pass directly in the yard of an Orthodox...