MOSCOW — In the latest skirmish between the and the cultural elite, the culture minister on Sunday fired the director of a Siberian theater who included a controversial interpretation of the life of Jesus in the Richard Wagner opera “Tannhauser.”
The director, Boris Mezdrich, had failed to apologize and to take other steps to mitigate the outcry among the Orthodox faithful offended by various aspects of the production at the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, said Vladimir Aristarkhov, the deputy minister of culture, according to Interfax.
President Vladimir V. Putin has made the protection of “traditional values,” including religious values, a pillar of his third term. In this case, Mr. Putin made his opinion known on March 23 when he awarded a state medal for “service to the homeland” to Aleksandr Novopashin, a priest in the Novosibirsk diocese who helped to lead the campaign against “Tannhauser.”
This case came three years after the storm over Pussy Riot, a punk protest band that performed an anti-Putin song in a Moscow cathedral. Several band members for “hooliganism.”
In 2013, a blasphemy law made it a criminal offense to perform public acts that offend believers, punishable by up to three years in prison.
The church took Mr. Mezdrich and the director of the opera, Timofei Kulyabin, to court in February, accusing them of offending the feelings of believers with their December production. Local prosecutors threw out the case on March 10.
But the church continued on the offensive. On Sunday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the theater, praying and holding up signs saying things like “Judas; 5th Column; Get out of the Culture Ministry” and “Let’s defend our faith in Christ from sacrilege.”
In an interview this month, Vladimir Medinsky, the culture minister, denied that the Kremlin was the enforcement arm of the . He made his displeasure over the opera clear, however, saying that the director had made a mistake by not warning the community about what was coming and then not reacting to the outcry.
“You have to explain what kind of a production this is, that it’s a new interpretation,” Mr. Medinsky said. “You have to talk to people. Instead, their position was approximately: ‘You foolish priests and your henchmen don’t understand anything about art.’ ”
Wagner’s circa 1845 opera focuses on a hero who is initially tempted by Venus and her entourage, but is eventually drawn back to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Novosibirsk version imagines Tannhauser as a modern film director who makes the temptation of Venus something that Jesus Christ endures. Perhaps the most controversial element was the poster for the would-be film, which shows a crucifix between the naked, open legs of a woman.
Cultural figures expressed dismay at the firing, with Aleksandr Kalyagin, the chairman of the Union of Theater Workers of Russia, saying it was a harsher reaction than those seen under the Soviet Union.
“Even in Soviet times there was a procedure known as the last warning from the party,” Mr. Kalyagin was quoted as saying by the official Tass news agency. “There are few good theater directors in the provinces,” he said. “By firing such people, we might be tossing away professionals.”
The culture ministry announced that the new director of the Novosibirsk opera house would be Vladimir Kekhman, the head of a St. Petersburg theater, who called the “Tannhauser” production “blasphemy” produced by “militant atheists” in remarks published on the ministry’s website.