Dec 18, 2006, 16:40 GMT
Berlin - Christian leaders joined Muslims Monday in criticizing a Berlin production of the opera Idomeneo with an anti- religious message which was to be guarded by police in the evening in case fundamentalists protested outside.
Riot police were drawn up outside the theatre hours before the curtain was to rise Monday evening. Metal-detector gates were set up to scan all members of the public entering the Deutsche Oper theatre.
'We've never before provided such a level of security for a Berlin opera,' city police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said.
A closing scene in which the opera hero mocks the severed heads of the founders of religions was described as offensive by Muslims as well as by Hans Joachim Meyer, who heads Germany's national Catholic lay body, and a Lutheran woman bishop, Baerbel Wartenberg-Potter.
There were no protests when the same production was first staged in 2003, but its cancellation in September amid fears that fundamentalists would think it sacrilegious and harm theatre staff led to worldwide attention.
Chancellor Angela Merkel led an outcry, saying the cancellation was self-censorship, and demanded the show be staged to demonstrate freedom of speech. She was not to be present Monday, but other senior German politicians booked seats.
A second and final performance is set for December 29. There have been no actual threats of demonstrations or violence against the show.
The final, 30-second scene added to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera by director Hans Neuenfels has the hero bring in papier-mache heads depicting Poseidon, Jesus Christ, Buddha and the Prophet Mohammed and laugh at them.
The government has invited all 15 members of its panel representing people of Muslim heritage, both secular and religious, to attend, but only nine accepted, the Interior Ministry said.
Leaders of the Council of Islam and German Council of Muslims declined the invitation.
Meyer, president of the Catholic national committee, said he entirely sympathized with the Muslim leaders.
'In the eyes of devout people, to demonstratively support an anti- religious spectacle is not proof of tolerance, but an expression of a lack of self-esteem,' said Meyer, adding that he wondered how Christians could watch such an opera without thinking likewise.
Wartenberg-Potter, Lutheran bishop of the northern city of Luebeck, said the scene trampled on people's precious values, adding that this was not enlightened, but primarily provocative.
'It expresses a denigration of religious values that is very widespread in our society,' she said on a national radio show.
However, Seyran Ates, a lawyer who represents Turkish wives in divorces, and Necla Kelek, an author critical of Turkish customs, slammed religious leaders who excused themselves from seeing the opera.
The two women are among Germany's best-known Turkish secular figures and are perceived as hostile to traditional Islam. As members of the government's Muslim-heritage panel, they indicated they would attend. Bookings have been moderate and the show was not sold out.
Ates said on the radio channel Deutschlandradio Kultur that the show ought to have initiated discussion on making religion more up to date. On the same channel, Kelek criticized Islam, saying it made no allowance for 'religion in the form of art.'
'Every individualized form of religion is banned,' she said.
Kenan Kolat, chairman of another secular group, the Turkish Community of Germany, had criticized the religious groups on Sunday.
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