On Saturday evening, February 12, 2022, with Russian troops poised to pounce not all that far away, hundreds of Odesans gathered at a concert of the Odesa Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of its longtime conductor, Venezuelan American Hobart Earl. As the concert wound down, Maestro Earl raised his baton for a surprise encore: a rousing rendition of the Overture to Mykola Lysenko’s opera Taras Bulba. The audience rose to its feet in patriotic fervor. No one in that hall doubted what country was home: Ukraine.
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