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Four people have been detained by French police after protesters set off flares during a concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Paris on Thursday night.
Clashes broke out in the auditorium during one of three disruptions to the performance by conductor Lahav Shani and pianist Sir Andras Schiff.
The concert, which featured a programme of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, had already been criticised by a French union for the performing arts, and pro-Palestinian activists had called for a boycott.
However, Culture Minister Rachida Dati strongly defended freedom of creativity as a French value and Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said nothing could excuse the “serious disturbances in the hall”.
Ticket-holders tried to disrupt the concert three times including twice with a flare, the Philharmonie de Paris said in a statement. At one point concertgoers said the hall became filled with smoke.
Video filmed inside the Pierre Boulez auditorium showed one man brandishing a flare as he walked down steps in a seating area. He was confronted by spectators and clashes broke out.
“The troublemakers were removed and the concert, which had to be interrupted, resumed and came to a peaceful conclusion,” the venue said, adding that it was taking legal action.
The disruption prompted an angry response from government figures on Friday, with Laurent Nuñez firmly condemning the incidents and praising police for their rapid response.
But Manon Aubry, a European Parliament member for the radical left France Unbowed, refused to condemn the disruption on French TV, arguing that the orchestra’s artists “represent the Israeli state [which] commits war crimes”.
Ahead of the concert, pro-Palestinian activists had pushed for its cancellation. Although the CGT-Spectacle union, which represents workers in the performing arts, did not go that far. It had called on the Philharmonie de Paris to “remind its audience of the extremely serious accusations levelled against [Israel’s] leaders” and saw the concert as “an attempt at normalisation by the State of Israel”.
Rachida Dati said nothing justified a call for a cultural boycott and said there was “no excuse for antisemitism”.
The Israel Philharmonic’s star conductor, 36-year-old Lahav Shani, was at the centre of another controversy in September when the organisers of the Flanders Festival in the Belgian city of Ghent cancelled his performance with the Munich Philharmonic, citing “insufficient clarity” on his attitude towards the Israeli government.
Its decision was criticised by both the Belgian and German governments and days later Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever attended a Munich Philharmonic concert with Lahav Shani conducting in the German city of Essen.
Condemning Thursday night’s disruption, the Philharmonie de Paris said that “regardless of people’s opinions, it is utterly unacceptable to threaten the safety of the public, staff and artists… bringing [violence] into a concert hall is extremely serious”.
