Environmental activists sprayed paint on the entrance to La Scala, Milan’s prestigious opera house, on Wednesday, the latest in a series of protests to alert public opinion to climate change.
Five activists from the Last Generation movement intervened at dawn, according to an AFP photographer, when the peninsula’s media spotlight was trained on the famous opera house in view of the gala evening scheduled for the opening of the season with the premiere of Boris Godunov.
Two people unfurled banners that read “Last Generation — No Gas, No Coal.”
“We have decided to spray La Scala with paint to ask the politicians who will attend tonight’s performance to stop playing ostrich politics and to intervene to save the population,” said explained Last Generation in a press release.
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 on the scene — where sprays of hot pink, electric blue and turquoise paint had splattered the sidewalk — and the activists were arrested.
A La Scala cleaning crew then hosed down the building.
“The economic and environmental situation is getting worse day by day”, continues Last Generation, referring to “the tragic situation of the Italian people, affected by the cataclysm of Ischia and betrayed by the indifference of the government”.
A landslide, caused by very heavy rains on November 26 on the island of Ischia, killed 12 people.
Last Generation activists have in recent weeks targeted works of art in European museums during protests intended, they say, not to damage the works, but to draw attention to the environmental disaster.
They targeted masterpieces such as the pearl girl by Johannes Vermeer in a museum in the Netherlands, death and life by Gustav Klimt at the Leopold Museum in Vienna or The sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh at the National Gallery in London.
Last month, at an exhibition in Milan, they also floured a car repainted by Andy Warhol.