“Sancta” by Florentina Holzinger
Performance in Stuttgart shocked the audience
October 9, 2024 by BR-KLASSIK
Sex, breaking taboos and real blood. There is a special trigger warning for the opera performance “Sancta” by Florentina Holzinger. Nevertheless, the first two performances led to first aid calls in the Stuttgart Opera House.
Bildquelle: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak
Despite an age rating of 18 and over and bold warnings, a current revealing and bloody opera performance in Stuttgart is leaving its mark on more sensitive visitors.
Viewers need a doctor
During the first two performances of Florentina Holzinger’s “Sancta”, the visitor service looked after a total of 18 people, some of whom complained of nausea, said State Opera spokesman Sebastian Ebling. In three cases a doctor had to be called in. The “Stuttgarter Nachrichten” and the “Stuttgarter Zeitung” had previously reported.
Artistic means of provocation and border crossing
Holzinger has been causing a stir in the theater world for years with her works, in which she radically and freely stages female bodies, incorporates painful stunts and doesn’t shy away from trash. In “Sancta” she brings lesbian love scenes to the stage with provocative clarity, ridicules Christian rituals and denounces the sexual oppression of women.
The house also expressly warns on its homepage that the performance by the scandal-ridden Austrian performance artist shows explicit sexual acts as well as depictions and descriptions of sexual violence. Real blood as well as fake blood, piercings and a wound can also be seen. Strobe effects, volume and incense would also be used. The opera recommends the performance to audiences who are “daring in their search for new theater experiences,” as it says on its homepage. However, in addition to the use of some theatrical means, performance art is “not fake, but real,” said Ebling. In the case of the sexual violence shown in “Sancta”, the house explicitly warns against retraumatization.
Opera doesn’t want to change anything about the performance
According to opera spokesman Ebling, nothing will be changed with regard to the five “Sancta” evenings still planned. Nausea and fainting also occur again and again, he said. The premiere was acclaimed. He is convinced that there were essentially people in the rows of visitors “who knew what they were getting into.” It must have been similarly exciting at the premiere in Schwerin at the end of May and June. Although without comparable consequences, as Katharina Nelles, head of public relations at the Mecklenburg State Theater, emphasized. Fortunately, there were no incidents at any of the four sold-out performances of “Sancta” in which visitor services or attending paramedics were called due to fainting or nausea, she said.
