MDNA à L'Olympia | part of 2012 MDNA Tour - European leg | July 26, 2012
Setlist
"Turning Up The Hits" (Intro)
"Turn Up The Radio"
"Open Your Heart"
"Masterpiece"
"Justify My Love" (Interlude)
"Vogue"
"Erotic Candy Shop"
"Human Nature"
"Beautiful Killer"
"Je t'aime... moi non plus"
Duration 45 mins
Attendance 2,576
Gross $ 346,653
Background
During the song "Nobody Knows Me" in her concert in Tel Aviv on May 31, 2012, during a morphing collage the face of French far-right politician and leader of the National Front Marine Le Pen appeared on the screen with a swastika superimposed on her forehead.
Le Pen also accused Madonna of kidnapping her adopted children from Malawi. Socialist French government spokesperson Najat Vallaud-Belkacem has also expressed her disappointment because this gained Marine Le Pen a worldwide audience (Mrs Vallaud-Belkacem did not disagree on the message).
At the performance in Nice, France at the Stade Charles-Ehrmann, many of Le Pen's supporters had covered up The MDNA Tour announcement posters with Le Pen's campaign posters. It was even speculated that French far right was to attend the show.
However, Madonna removed the swastika from the video of "Nobody Knows Me" and replaced it with a question mark. A local party supporter Gael Nofri welcomed the change stating: "As far as I know, Madonna has never changed a video clip. This is proof that our arguments were valid. This is excellent news." Nevertheless, after that performance, Madonna has used the original video clip. Madonna later defended her use of the swastika image, stating she did it to raise awareness of ever growing intolerance towards religious minorities and immigrants (the National Front is against immigration.)
Criticism
Madonna's show in Paris at L'Olympia was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews from fans and critics, with most of the criticism centering on the fact that the concert lasted only 45 minutes, even though the tickets had been sold at the same price as for the others full stage MDNA Tour shows and fans had not been alerted of the abbreviated format of the show. Responding to the criticism, Madonna's publicist declared that her past club shows "were never more than 45 minutes", adding that the concert was "planned as a heartfelt thank you to France which she expressed at the start of the show" and also, the show cost Madonna nearly $1 million to produce and keeping the prices at $100 involved a "tremendous effort".According to TMZ, the riot at the concert in Paris had nothing to do with her brief performance but with around 10 "fans" in the audience who overheard yelling about Marine Le Pen. However, several French news outlets reported that the backlash against Madonna's performance was started by a considerable number of fans rather than an isolated group of Marine Le Pen supporters.