The Viennese choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger will stage her first opera at the Wiener Festwochen. Under the working title Sancta, the one-act opera Sancta Susanna by Paul Hindemith will be supplemented with new compositions and sacred music to create a feminist mass. After the world premiere at the Mecklenburg State Theatre (May 2024), the piece will be performed at the Vienna Festival in 2024.
Florentina Holzinger is currently considered one of the most exciting female theater makers and is known for her radical and spectacular performances that break all boundaries. For her production Ophelia's Got Talent at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, she has received numerous awards from critics, including "Theater Director of the Year" from the magazine Theater heute and "Best Production of the Year" from the magazine TANZ. For the first time, she is now developing an opera in which she and her performers are on stage together with vocal soloists, choir singers and orchestra.
Based on Paul Hindemith's scandalous play Sancta Susanna, which places the female libido at the center of the plot, a scenic mass is created that deals with Christian rites as well as miracles and magic and celebrates the emancipation of female desire as liberation. The evening will be accompanied by sacred music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Rachmaninov and Charles Gounod, among others. Austrian composer Johanna Doderer will arrange all the musical parts of the mass for female voices and add an Agnus Dei and a Sanctus as new compositions. The production is made possible by a broad production alliance consisting of Florentina Holzinger/Spirit, neon lobster, the Wiener Festwochen, the Mecklenburg State Theater, the Stuttgart State Opera and the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin.
For Florentina Holzinger, developing an opera production is a logical continuation of her artistic work: "My shows have a lot in common with opera. Different art forms such as dance, music, drama and performance come together and combine to create a total work of art. Sancta is exciting because we expand the concrete composition, which can be experienced on stage through singers, choir and orchestra, with additional instruments, namely our performative access to the body."
Milo Rau © Gael Turine/The New York Times/laif
Sancta will be shown at the Wiener Festwochen in summer 2024. Festival Director Milo Rau has long been associated with Holzinger: "I have been following Florentina's work for many years. Her clarity and radicalism, but also the absolute freedom with which she takes feminist and generally political positions, are a perfect fit for the Wiener Festwochen. As a producing festival, we are super proud to be involved in the creation of Sancta and to celebrate the premiere with her in Florentina's home city of Vienna."
Wiener Festwochen May 17 to June 23, 2024
www.festwochen.at
