Bolshoi embroiled in 'pornography' protests
Russia’s prestigious Bolshoi Theatre was embroiled in protests today as a pro-Kremlin youth group picketed the premiere of an opera written by a Russian writer it has branded a pornographer.
Moving Together, a nationwide youth movement devoted to President Vladimir Putin, has in the past publicly burned books by Vladimir Sorokin, who was commissioned to write the libretto of the new opera.
It condemned the state-funded Bolshoi for staging such a work.
“We are protesting that a man who is a pornographer and uses foul language is being given a platform in the Russian State Bolshoi Theatre, with state funds,” the group’s leader, Vasily Yakemenko, said.
He said his group would not seek to disrupt the evening performance of Children of Rosenthal.
“If people want to go to the opera of a pornographer, that’s their choice,” Yakemenko said.
Several dozen Moving Together activists, who have been holding daily demonstrations outside the column-fronted theatre in the centre of Moscow, again gathered at its entrance just before tonight’s performance.
“Protect Russia’s main theatre stage from a pornographer,” one banner read.
They were briefly confronted by a handful of members of a radical youth group, Red Youth, who put out their own show of support for Sorokin.
“Moving Together, you are not to judge,” they chanted under red flags, leaving shortly afterwards.
After the premiere started, an anonymous caller warned of a bomb planted in the theatre, according to one report. Security guards and sniffer dogs checked the building without interrupting the performance. They found no explosives and the opera ended peacefully.
