At the premiere performances of the opera "Sancta" at the State Opera Stuttgart (Staatsoper Stuttgart), which was staged by Austrian set designer Florentine Holzinger, 18 spectators sought medical help amid shock and nausea. Three spectators really needed medical help, according to the portal Stuttgart Zeitung.
In a comment on the social network, the opera House clarified that one of the "victims of art" had problems with blood circulation that were not related to the performance.
Holzinger created a combination of the one-act opera by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) "Saint Susanna" with elements of the Catholic liturgy.
In the description of the new production on the official portal of the theater, the audience was warned that the performance would feature "explicit sexual acts, as well as images and descriptions of (sexual) violence." It also features real blood and stage blood, piercing and wounding, a lot of naked bodies. The performance includes strobe effects, high volume and incense. Also, the directors indicate that the experience can be traumatic.
"In the opera, the Austrian woman with defiant clarity shows same—sex love scenes, ridicules Christian rituals and denounces the sexual exploitation of women," the publication clarifies.
This discouraging action lasts 2 hours and 45 minutes without intermission.
The artistic director of the Stuttgart Opera, Victor Schoner, noted that exploring borders and crossing them with pleasure has always been a central task of art.
Sebastian Ebling, an official representative of Staatsoper Stuttgart, is sure that "there were people in the hall who knew what they were doing." Nausea and fainting happen periodically, but the premiere was greeted with delight. Tickets for the next five performances were sold out in full, tickets for performances in Berlin in November were also sold out.
On the theater's portal, a quote from the Süddeutsche Zeitung was used in the description of the production: "Scandal? No, joy. Stormy joy."
At the same time, viewers left a lot of negative comments on the Stuttgart Opera's social network page.
"Is it a brothel or an opera house?", "Would this director attack Islam in the same way? For me, this has nothing to do with art,""My comment has just been deleted, in which I wrote that I consider the work of Sancta to be blasphemous and offending my feelings as a Christian. I also sent a photo from the current performance, where a woman swallows a Christian cross. It's strange, but Facebook* didn't like this picture", "It's unbelievable that something like this is still being sold as art. It's not art, it's just disgusting... obscene and disgusting", "If 18 people were clearly so "enthusiastic" about the idea that they needed medical help, then something went wrong, don't you think?", "Anyone who wants to see something like that on stage, can do it. I don't want to, it's disgusting," users write.
*Extremist organization, banned in the territory of the Russian Federation