YEREVAN. – World-renowned tenor Andrea Bocelli gave an open-air concert on April 22 at Liberty Square of Armenia’s capital Yerevan. His concert was attended by the country’s elite, and, behind the police fences, by the people, Hraparak daily writes.  

“Even though the concert was not a concrete pre-election campaign [for the May 6 parliamentary elections], it was organized for pre-election objectives, as an evidence of the authorities’ high cultural taste. But the cost for inviting Bocelli to Yerevan was not publicized at all.   

Our source at the Opera Theater says listening to Bocelli for 1.5 hours directly cost US$ 1,200,000 to our budget. At the same time, our interlocutor notes with regret that with this amount the Opera could have staged six exquisite performances, which would have caused pleasure to our audience for years,” Hraparak writes.