Stuttgart – Despite bold warnings, a revealing and bloody opera performance in Stuttgart leaves its mark. During the first two performances of Florentina Holzinger’s “Sancta,” 18 visitors had to be treated for nausea and shock.
In three cases, a doctor was called in, said Stuttgart State Opera spokesman Sebastian Ebling. The “Stuttgarter Zeitung” had previously reported.
The performance in the Stuttgart Opera House aims to cross boundaries
Photo: Matthias Baus
Choreographer Florentina Holzinger (38) radically showcases female bodies in her work, incorporates painful stunts and doesn’t shy away from trash. In “Sancta” the Austrian brings lesbian love scenes to the stage with provocative clarity, ridicules Christian rituals and denounces the sexual oppression of women.
Christian rituals are ridiculed in an obscene manner
Photo: Matthias Baus
“Exploring boundaries and crossing them with pleasure has always been a central task of art,” the Stuttgart Opera quotes its artistic director Viktor Schoner as saying.
For some viewers, the scenes were too much
Photo: Matthias Baus
Opera house warns of blood and violence
The house expressly warns on the Internet that the performance by the scandal-ridden Austrian performance artist explicitly shows sexual acts and depictions of sexual violence. Real blood, piercings and a wound can also be seen. Strobe effects, volume and incense would also be used.
The Stuttgart Opera House is regularly named “Opera House of the Year”.
Foto: picture alliance / Markus Mainka
The opera recommends the performance to audiences who are “daringly looking 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”. In the case of the sexual violence shown in “Sancta,” the house explicitly warns against retraumatization.
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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.”
