Madonna’s Russian church controversy
Posted on May 9, 2009
Filed Under East meets West | Leave a Comment
Madonna is set to perform a controversial concert in Russia. The ‘Material Girl’ singer wants to stage a show in the main square of St. Petersburg, home of the State Hermitage Museum, in August but local authorities are furious about the plans. They have branded the proposed event a “natural disaster†and the museum’s director, Dr. Mikhail Piotrovski will demand the pop superstar signs an agreement to set out decency and volume levels. He wants her to guarantee that there will be no blasphemy.” Madonna has outraged the Russian officials who fear the singer will wreak blasphemous havoc with the forthcoming concert in front of the country’s oldest museum.
The performance in August in front of the Hermitage Museum, which is in the main square of St. Petersburg, has led to the authorities demanding the singer to vow not to cause trouble at her show. Piotrovski is also forcing Madonna to sign an agreement that would keep her from playing music too loudly.
Earlier tours also had her up against the Russian church when in 2006 she performed at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow where more than 50,000 people attended the singer’s “Confessions” tour concert, where the best seats cost more than $900 — nearly twice the monthly salary of an average Muscovite. “This vulgar pop star is abusing Christian symbols,” said an elderly Orthodox woman singing hymns with a small group of female protesters outside the concert. She refused to give her name, saying only, “I am a sinner.”
Madonna’s use of the cross as a prop had spawned protests across Europe and led to the arrest of a priest in the Netherlands who confessed to calling a fake bomb threat into the Amsterdam stadium where she was performing. Russian believers got particularly agitated: Fundamentalist Orthodox Christians declared Madonna the subject of a holy inquisition, and protesters drove a stake through a picture of the singer, whom they labeled an “American Satanist.” Further, the architect who designed the stadium said it could collapse and kill thousands. And the Kremlin took the unusual step of issuing a statement that President Vladimir Putin and his two daughters, contrary to rumor, would not be dining with the pop diva. The protests were driven by a number in the show when Madonna, wearing a crown of thorns, sings while raised on a cross. The hierarchy also weighed in, calling on believers to boycott the show. The church said, through a spokesman, that Madonna “needs spiritual assistance.”
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