A concert pianist claims an online critic — not her own allegedly racist tweets — is ruining her career.
Valentina Lisitsa, a Ukrainian musician who rose to popularity on YouTube with more than 62 million views, says in a lawsuit her CD sales and bookings have plunged since classical-music critic John Bell Young started maligning her on his blog and on Facebook as Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and homophobic.
He doesn’t like her piano playing either.
“She’s some hack,” Young told The Post.
Lisitsa, a pro-Russia native of Kiev who uses her Twitter account to slam her fellow Ukrainians as “bird-brained” Nazis, says in her $6.7 million Manhattan federal-court filing that Young has gone “beyond subjective critiques of artistic talent.”
Lisitsa, 42, who has been touted as the Justin Bieber of classical music, says Young allegedly wrote that she “should die,” and slammed her as a “pig,” “whore,” “criminal,” and the “world’s worst pianist,” who traded sex for career advancement and had abortions as a teen.
“The statements . . . are untrue,” Lisitsa says in her defamation lawsuit.
“Oh, she should absolutely drop dead,” Young retorted. “I don’t really care what she says because she’s a horrible pianist, she’s a horrible human being.”
Lisitsa’s career once included performances at Carnegie Hall and London’s Royal Albert Hall. Last year, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra canceled a scheduled Lisitsa show based on her anti-Ukrainian tweets, which she has defended as free speech. Bookings since dropped from about $188,000 worth of business in 2014 to a mere $25,000 this year, she says.
Young, who reviewed the pianist’s work in February, says he has never met Lisitsa in person but has seen her racist rants online.
“This has made my day,” he said when The Post inquired about the allegations. “She is a racist . . . I would love the whole world to know what kind of woman this is.”
Lisitsa’s Twitter posts include using a picture of pig testicles to represent Ukranian leaders she dislikes.
Another image compared Ukranian teachers in ethnic garb to a photo of black people in tribal dress. She also mocked one political leader as having Down Syndrome.
“My objective is to make sure this vile woman does not perform in the United States of America,” Young said.