Despite an 18-and-over age rating and bold warnings, a raucous and bloody opera performance in Stuttgart is leaving its mark on more sensitive visitors. Religious values are mocked in the play.
Wolfgang Holz
It seems almost like a disaster scenario. During the first two performances of “Sancta” by Florentina Holzinger at the Stuttgart State Opera, the visitor service recently had to take care of a total of 18 people, some of whom complained of nausea.
The spokesman of the State Opera, Sebastian Ebling, informed this much about this – as the “Stuttgarter Zeitung” wrote recently. In three cases a doctor had to be called in. Despite these incidents, further performance should continue as planned.
Naked nuns on roller skates in the half pipe
It is a slightly different production that is currently being shown at the Stuttgart State Opera. In “Sancta” by Florentina Holzinger there is a lot of exposed skin, blood, depictions of sexual acts and sexual violence. Wounds are also shown on stage.
© Nicole Marianna Wytyczak
Naked nuns in the half pipe
Specifically, nuns skate through a halfpipe on roller skates. Two performers have sex on a neon-lit cross. One even has a piece of meat cut from her body – in close cooperation, then put on the grill and finally released for tasting.
Sistine Chapel as a climbing wall
The choreographer herself becomes a clapper with a bell. Last but not least, she redesigns the Sistine Chapel into a climbing wall on which actresses climb naked like spiders. God transforms into a robot.
© Nicole Marianna Wytyczak
Nuns and forbidden love in the opera scandal “Sancta”
Suppressed desire, the punished sexuality of a nun, lesbian love: the opera “Sancta” by Florentina Holzinger is dedicated to this subject. First performed in Schwerin, seen some time ago in Vienna and now in Stuttgart, the Austrian performance artist creates a core drama about women’s identity and the body in religious systems and rituals. It is no wonder that this show has inspired some Catholic minds. Because Christian values are also a joke.
Performance choreographer Florentina Holzinger
Return to Hindemith Opera
The opera “Sancta” by Florentina Holzinger is definitely not for the faint of heart. Based on the one-act musical “Sancta Susanna” by the German composer Paul Hindemith, which was first performed in 1922, she and a group of opera singers, sex workers and body modification artists develop a drastic drama about the long-suppressed time and they are severely punished in the end. a nun’s sexual desire: A musical and expressive reflection on the body and sexuality, which stylizes, together with the audience, a sacred mass – a kind of feminist spectacle.
“Disrespectful patch”
The famous Austrian choreographer pays tribute to the radical reversal of the roles “and pays back in her representation of the Catholic Church in terms of 2,000 years of hostility to desire and the oppression of women,” as “Der Standard” sees it.
Archbishop Franz Lackner (Salzburg) and Bishop Felix Gmür (Basel) in Prague.
Holzinger’s performance of “Sancta” already attracted representatives of the Catholic Church during the Vienna Festival: Archbishop of Salzburg Franz Lackner and Bishop of Innsbruck Hermann Glettler described the performance as “irreverent satire”.
Certainly the freedom of art should be respected and protected as “an important achievement of democracy,” the Archbishop of Salzburg told Kathpress. However, like any other freedom, that freedom also has its limits when it “severely injures the religious feelings and convictions of believers”.
“Strong lack of imagination”
This is the case with “Sancta”, where Lackner sees “a most regrettable lack of respect”. This is all the more painful, says Lackner, “because today more than ever art and religion are called upon to fight side by side as companions in the fight against carelessness, greed and injustice for life with human dignity.” On the other hand, the well-known Viennese theologian Jan-Heiner Tück accused the piece of being “stupid without imagination”.
Theologian Jan-Heiner Tück
Raised Catholic
Florentina Holzinger, who grew up as a Catholic, is known for her amazing productions. Her piece “Ophelia’s Got Talent” addressed casting shows in a feminist way. The 38-year-old studied choreography at the School for the Development of New Dance (SNDO) at the Amsterdam School of Art (AHK).
Her graduate solo work “Silk” was awarded the Prix Jardin d’Europe at the “ImPulsTanz” festival in 2012. Her second solo work, “Recovery,” is an experimental interpretation of a traumatic accident she herself suffered. first time in 2015. In 2020 she presented the work “Étude for an Emergency”, a musical composition for ten bodies and a car, for the first time at the Munich Kammerspiele.
© Catholic Media Center, October 10, 2024
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