MADONNA’S world tour began in typically provocative fashion when the pop singer hung from a cross, shouted an obscenity at an image of President Bush, showed video footage that seemed to compare Tony Blair to Adolf Hitler, and writhed around on a device that combined a horse’s saddle with a stripper’s pole.

As if that were not enough, the singer also wore a crown of thorns, dressed up as various male icons — James Brown and John Travolta included — and even briefly played the electric guitar. Early reviews of the event on Sunday night were positive, but the show failed to produce the reaction so beloved by Madonna: shock.

“Throughout the night Madonna worked hard, not just to stay on pitch and dance well, but also to connect emotionally to her material,” Ann Powers wrote in a Los Angeles Times review that was positive but avoided superlatives.

Lyndsey Parker, on the Yahoo! Music website, was less reserved. She wrote: “Despite the surprising and disappointing lack of an encore (what, no Like A Prayer?), during her breathless two-hour set the Divine Miz M justified not only her audience’s love, but her somewhat exorbitant ticket price. It can safely be said that those 16,000 fans got their money’s worth, and then some.”

The Confessions tour opened in Los Angeles and will travel across North America before resuming in Wales in July. From there it will move through eight cities on the Continent, then to Japan. With tickets priced at up to $380 (£200), the tour is expected to earn more than $200 million — a record for a solo female performer. The tour comes amid rumours that the 47-year-old singer’s marriage to the British film-maker Guy Ritchie is under strain. He is reported to be making a behind-the-scenes documentary about the tour. The last film he made with his wife, Swept Away, a box-office disaster, was ridiculed by critics.

In true showbiz fashion, the concert began 50 minutes late. During the Christian-baiting crucifixion sequence, the singer was suspended on a giant mirrored cross, on which she sang the ballad Live to Tell. Video screens showed images of suffering children in third-world countries.

BAD TASTE

Every Good Friday eight pious Filipinos volunteer to be nailed to crosses on a hill north of Manila