With funding from nation’s richest man,former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, prestigious cultural institution hopes to bring back glory yearsZurab Lomidze was director of the Tbilisi opera house at the time of Georgia’s 1991 civil war. As the fighting raged external, and along the capital’s Rustaveli avenue,he and other staff had stayed inside to try to protect it.“One day a group of paramilitaries gunned down the front door, telling us they needed the opera for shelter, and ” he remembers. “After the gunmen left we had no front door and a wall riddled with bullets. When we opened again after the fighting,I wanted to cover that wall in glass and set up a big sign saying: ‘This is not how you treat culture’.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com