Disgraced Georgian soprano aims to make amends for hurt caused to LGBTI community.

Tamar Iveri, the disgraced soprano who was forced to withdraw from Opera Australia’s production of Verdi’s Otello last June, will perform a charity concert tonight in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. The performance will mark the first stage in what the singer must hope will be the rebuilding of her international career following the worldwide furore over a lengthy homophobic letter that was posted on her Facebook page last year.

The letter, bearing Iveri’s name, 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. Support was also expressed in graphic terms for those taking part in the violence. In a series of conflicting statements, Iveri subsequently claimed that either her husband wrote the offending post or that the couple had worked on it in tandem. Either way, following Limelight’s breaking of the story back in June and the...