Disgraced soprano will perform in support of sexual minorities and victims of violence.

The disgraced Georgian soprano who left Opera Australia’s production of Otello last month following widespread howls of protest at homophobic remarks posted on her Facebook page, is to perform a charity concert for LGBTI rights. Tamar Iveri announced the Tbilisi concert, planned for October 11 (National Coming Out Day), at a joint press conference with Georgian gay rights organisation Identoba. “This is to apologise and to express support,” she said.

Iveri has been roundly condemned over the last month in a worldwide media storm after Limelight broke the story on June 20. A letter, bearing Iveri’s name and posted on her Facebook page, was addressed to the then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili criticising his condemnation of an attack by Orthodox Christians on a LGBTI parade in the Georgian capital in May 2013. In it, LGBTI people were described as “deviants” and homosexuality was referred to as part of the “faecal mass” being foisted on Georgia by the West. Iveri’s subsequent statement that her letter had been copied, changed and posted by her husband without her consent was challenged when an...