SANCTA

Wiener Festwochen 2024

Mon 10. to Sat 15.06., 19.30h, Performance Opera

On stage: a bell that weighs two tons, a skateboard halfpipe and a waterfall. The Austrian performance artist Florentina Holzinger demolishes stage genres and visual habits. Setting out from Paul Hindemith’s one-act opera "Sancta Susanna" (premiered in 1922), she joins forces with an ensemble of opera singers, sex workers and body modification artists to investigate the way female identities and bodies are trimmed in religious systems and rites. The drama about a nun’s lust and sexuality is intertwined with new compositions by Johanna Doderer, Born in Flamez, Stefan Schneider and Nadine Neven Raihani as well as with religious works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Rachmaninoff and others.
It is a musical and performative reflection on bodies and sexuality that evolves into a celebration of a mass together with the audience.

Age Recommendation: 18+