The theatre performance features explicit lesbian sex scenes, real blood and naked nuns on roller skates
The opera strikes most people as a rather traditional place, and doesn’t usually tend to shake things up.
Yet, if this Austrian production is anything to go by, things in the world of opera music have come a long way.
When the Sancta Susanna production took to the stage, some of the audience found it so shocking due to some of its explicit scenes and stunts that 18 members needed hospital treatment.
The Stuttgart State Opera website summarises the opera as ‘Bach meets metal, the Weather Girls meet Rachmaninoff – and naked nuns meet roller skates’.
I mean, it certainly doesn’t sound like your average bunch of arias and choruses.
Within the performance, audience-goers will witness the story of a suppressed nun discovering her sexuality, as well as exploring lesbianism and fantasies, including those about Jesus Christ on the cross.
While it sounds new and radical, the opera was actually supposed to go on stage in 1921, but was cancelled. Now it’s finally been performed, but the shock factor is amped up, as it’s been labelled as a ‘radical vision of the Holy Mass’.
The first two performances of Sancta Susanna had 18 people in the audience suffering with nausea and shock during the first two performances.
The side effects from watching the opera were reportedly so bad, a doctor was asked to attend.
The Sancta Susanna opera features an actress with dwarfism dressed as a nun. (YouTube/Staatsoper Stuttgart)
Scenes in the new version of the opera include two nuns experimenting with lesbian sex, which includes nudity on stage described as ‘sensual, poetic and wild’.
In other parts of the performance, an actress with dwarfism is dressed as the pope and swung around the stage. There’s also nuns in roller skates as well as a person dressed up as Jesus performing ‘Eminem’…as you do.
The performance only allows those over the age of 18 to attend, due to the nature of the scenes on stage. These include sex acts, painful and violent stunts, real and fake blood, piercings and violence on stage.
In one notable scene, bodies are hung up to mimic the crucifixion, before being covered in fake blood which pours across the stage.
Responding to questions over whether nudity and the violence on stage is ‘necessary’, the State Opera website says: “Of course, theater and opera merely imitate reality: when people love, suffer and die on the opera stage, it is all just an act.
One of the tamer scenes in Sancta Susanna. (YouTube/Staatsoper Stuttgart)
“Things have been different for decades in performance art: here, the person performing does not embody a character, here the body itself is the medium – and in Florentina Holzinger’s work in particular, natural nudity is a very central means of expression.”
The show lasts three hours with no interval or break, and those attended are warned. The opera house stresses Sancta Susanna is just for those ‘daringly looking for new theatrical experiences’.
Despite the criticism and strong audience reaction, Sancta Susanna is set to continue performing.
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Staatsoper Stuttgart
