A radical feminist opera featuring explicit lesbian sex scenes, real blood and wounds, and naked roller-skating nuns has left 18 audience members in Austria requiring medical treatment.
Composer Paul Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna caused a scandal in 1921, with outraged critics labeling the one-act opera, which tells the story of a repressed nun who discovers her sexuality too blasphemous to be shown.
The premiere at the Stuttgart Opera was canceled, but more than a hundred years later the film is now being staged in the city for the first time – taking the shock factor to dizzying new heights in what its makers call a ‘radical vision of the world’ . Holy Mass’.
The provocative scenes left theatergoers reeling, with 18 people suffering from nausea and shock and requiring assistance during the first two performances. In three cases a doctor even had to be called.
Extreme performance artist Florentina Holzinger is behind the astonishing adaptation, which sees the all-female cast play nuns who strip off their habits during the ‘sensual, poetic and wild’ show.
The most bizarre scenes include an actress with dwarfism dressed as the Pope being lifted into the air and spun by a robotic arm, while another performs Eminem songs dressed as Jesus.
Sancta tells the story of a repressed nun who discovers her sexuality. At one point she prays while watching two lovers in the garden of her monastery
In one scene, tattooed naked performers clamber across a table, drinking wine and singing, while another lifts a sword in the shape of a crucifix and shoves it into her throat.
The performance stars a female pope, who, according to critics, ‘dissects’ Catholicism
At one point, an actress with dwarfism is dressed up as the Pope is lifted into the air and spun by a robotic arm
Performers wearing nun veils roller skate in a halfpipe during part of the performance
The shocking performance includes nudity and ‘painful’ stunts
“Bach meets metal, the Weather Girls meet Rachmaninoff – and naked nuns meet roller skates,” is how the website of the Stuttgart State Opera summarizes the performance.
The ‘feminist crowd’ sees its main character, a young nun named Susanna, discover her sexuality and ultimately pull down the loincloth of Christ on the crucifix in the scandalous climax.
The performance has an age limit of 18 years and includes sexual acts, painful stunts, real and fake blood, piercings and inflicting a wound on stage.
Naked performers hang like clappers from bells, with only their bare buttocks or heads visible, while others in nothing but harnesses scale a rock face and climb ropes.
In one scene, tattooed naked performers clamber across a table, drinking wine and singing, while another lifts a sword in the shape of a crucifix and shoves it into her throat.
In a very irreligious conversation, an actress playing Jesus knocks a half-naked woman off the screen.
And in one particularly disturbing scene, bodies are hung on the wall to mimic Christ on the cross, before vats of fake blood flow over them.
Most shocking of all, a critic described the moment one of the actors was injured live on stage.
At one point, an actress playing Jesus knocks a half-naked woman off the screen
The provocative performance is based on an opera that was labeled ‘blasphemous’ by critics
To illustrate the Eucharist, the body of Christ, a piece of skin is cut from an artist’s side, which is then grilled to medium rare, according to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The show’s website warns attendees that the performance art is “not fake, it’s real.”
In the case of the sexual violence shown, the theater is issuing explicit trigger warnings, saying some may be left “discomforted” or even “traumatized” by the performance.
The nearly three-hour show, which has no intermission, proved too much for some who attended the performances in Stuttgart.
A spokesman for the opera said those affected were seated in the rows near the stage and would have known “what they were indulging in.”
The opera company recommends the performance to viewers who are ‘daringly looking for new theater experiences’.
In the opera, a nun warns Susanna with an old story about the nun Beata, who had desired the Savior on the cross and was imprisoned alive for it
The show’s website warns visitors that the performance art is ‘not fake, it’s real’
The cast plays nuns who strip off their habits during the ‘sensual, poetic and wild’ show
“Exploring and joyfully crossing boundaries has always been a central task of art,” says the opera’s artistic director Viktor Schöner.
In response to the question of whether nudity on stage is ‘necessary’, the State Opera website says: ‘Of course, theater and opera only imitate reality: when people love, suffer and die on the opera stage, it is all just an act.
‘It has been different in performance art for decades: here the person performing does not embody a character, here the body itself is the medium – and especially in the work of Florentina Holzinger, natural nudity is a very central means of expression.’
Organizers said Sancta will go ahead as planned despite the effect it had on the audience, stressing that nausea and fainting are normal in the theater.
The 38-year-old Austrian choreographer behind the performance has been causing a stir in the theater world for years with her staging of naked female bodies and shocking stunts.
Themes include the sexual, physical and social oppression of women and a ‘dissection’ of Catholicism and organized religion
The opera from the twenties has a modern twist with contemporary music mixed with classical
There is nudity during the performance, which has an age restriction for those present
She was born in Vienna in 1986 and studied at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam before launching her unorthodox career.
Her works are known to trample the boundaries of traditional dance and mix them with elements of martial arts, circus and stunt performances.
Themes include the sexual, physical and social oppression of women and a ‘dissection’ of Catholicism and organized religion.
Her sexually charged and often violent and bloody performances are often delivered with humor.
Christians have visited the show and labeled its content blasphemous and offensive. “Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” an objector said on one of Holzinger’s posts.
The actor playing Jesus is said to perform Eminem-inspired songs
Naked performers hang like clappers from bells, with only their bare buttocks or heads visible
But the opera, which has already been shown in Germany and will be performed in Berlin next month, has been praised by critics.
‘A scandal? No, joy. Overwhelming joy,” wrote one reviewer after seeing the show in Schwerin.
‘Holzinger is directing a musical theater for the first time and the result is so clever, so funny, so incredibly well put together, that you are truly amazed by it.’