Eighteen treated for severe nausea in Stuttgart after opera of live sex and piercing

Eighteen treated for severe nausea in Stuttgart after opera of live sex and piercing
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www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/10/18-treate…

Eighteen theatregoers at Stuttgart’s state opera required medical treatment for severe nausea over the weekend after watching a performance that included live piercing, unsimulated sexual intercourse and copious amounts of fake and real blood.

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That's show business, folks!

why were we wasting medical resources on Germans?

ofc its germany /lh

unsimulated

seems like an unnecessarily extra word. you could just say 'included live piercing, sexual intercourse and blah blah..

The version that unsettled audience members in Stuttgart this year supplanted the original musical performance with naked nuns rollerskating on a movable half-pipe at the centre of the stage, a wall of crucified naked bodies and a lesbian priest saying mass.

Lmao, that’s great. I almost suspect the cases of severe nausea to be press baiting, it’s just a little too good.

The person announcing that people needed medical care is the spokesperson for the play. Very obvious PR bait.

I wish they weren't all sold out, I kinda want to see it now. It's working! 😂

If you're ever in NYC just go to The Box. You'll see the same exact shit, literally.

Though expect to pay $2000 for tickets at 1am on a Wednesday night because the venue solely exists to milk rich people

"Ok Morty, fuck it, I'm doing an opera. It's gonna have.... uh... naked ladies, a lot of fake blood (some real blood), piercings, nuns getting shwifty, and a FUCKING HALF PIIIII- *belch* -IIIIPE!"

Club Vandersex is back awwwww yissssss

"The Aristocrats!"

Title goes in square brackets, link goes in parentheses

[Title](www)

Beautiful! I kept up the whole time and got the joke!

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'm being fully honest in my question. I kept up with what was being said, but I'm 99% sure that I'm missing the joke. I know it's a faux pas, but can you explain the punchline to me?

I'm guessing it has something to do with the ruling class being shittier than the average person, but I feel like I'm missing something.

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[deleted]

Watch the documentary "The Aristocrats".

People like you are why we love this joke. 🤣🤣🤣

A friend of mine has a condition that can easily cause him to pass out from seeing blood, or indeed *picturing* blood in his mind. I remember us listening to a guy talking about a surgery he had recently gone through, one that involved fixing an artery, et voila, my friend suddenly passed out.

My only point being that some people can be very sensitive, and my buddy would've no doubt spent a performance like this drifting in and out of consciousness.

That's terrible but also very useful to get out of uncomfortable situations

Its actually his superhero power

I have friends like this and with my lifestyle and history of emergency response, I can't fathom it. Apart from trained hygiene precautions, my brain just never reacts to blood apart from it being an indicator of the next actions to take to keep as much of it inside as possible. I've had a shower off a firetruck to get blood off—clothes ruined, still washing blood out of my hair once I got home—but training kept those two alive in time for paramedics to arrive. That's all my brain thought about. They found out and my buddy and I got a call from the hospital to meet them ♥️

But then I have another friend that gets queasy seeing a scratch and has passed out from a needle...

Some of us just have very different survival instincts. Fight or flight seem to both work very well so long as you're one of the other. But they certainly can't understand each other.

I used to think the cause of this was something about how you were raised or how repugnant any discussion of bodily fluids or medical stuff was in your childhood. Some of my friends can't handle talking about any medical procedure at all, which I always thought was odd, but I chalked it up to childhood experiences. I've since learned that child rearing is not the cause, although I'm sure it has some influence.

My mom was a nurse, and we talked about all sorts of bodily fluids, medical issues, and, frankly, gross stuff while growing up. I developed a full tolerance for it. Similar to you, it just felt like a step on the way to treatment and healing. It does not bother me at all to see it or hear a discussion about it at the dinner table, no matter how gross. But, my brother, who was raised in the exact same circumstances, passes out when he gets stuck with a needle. Every. Time. I know that the response to needles and blood aren't the same as medical procedures, but my point is that people react differently no matter their upbringing.

Clearly, some people are just made to react that way in emergencies. This is not throwing even a drop of shade at people who have to experience that queasiness, but I'm very grateful that I'm not one of those people. We just react differently.

Also, I 1000% respect people who work in emergency services. I don't know if you still do it, but you guys have to deal with a lot of horrific injuries and people at the worst moments of their life. You're absolutely essential, and I don't think you get the recognition you deserve. <3

I had a friend in high school who got squeamish at the sight of blood, or at least that's what we all thought. She went on to become a surgeon. Turns out, it's the idea of people being in pain that got to her. Operating on someone who's out cold was absolutely fine even if they're gushing blood all over the place, because they can't feel it.

I get the same impact, but different response. When I see people in trouble, I have to help. I even started surf life rescue at 12 after saving a few people over time while surfing. It hasn't stopped and I did more and more, wanting to he a combat medic. The adrenaline that surges seeing trouble is uncontrollable. I do anything short of pure stupidity to save a life and realised it's a rare trait to have it that extreme, so wanted to ensure it was being put to use.

I hate seeing trauma and my reaction is to fix it at whatever cost. So, much respect to your surgeon friend, I totally get her.

Going to the Opera on Saturday, but it probably won't be this much fun. Shame.

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Man, Germany has all the cool shit.

cool fresh shit

action paintings with blood and fresh excrement

Good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu, but also someone who can urinate on cue,” Holzinger told the Guardian in an interview earlier this year.

Just your average choreographer 😄

"To me, a good dancer is someone who can urinate on cue"

Wtf dude

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Couldn't disagree more, that sounds hilarious 😄

Very good splits Hazel, now shit on Julia's chest. I said give Julia a Cleveland Streamer!!!

I guess there won't be a live-stream?

Sounds like there already was.

https://www.ndr.de/kultur/buehne/theaterberichte/mecklenburg_vorpommern/Sancta-Oper-in-Schwerin-Spiel-mit-katholischen-Symbolen,sancta102.html

look at this if you wanna know what the opera looks like. The fascinating thing to me is that they apparently put on several shows in Schwerin (predominantly protestsnt town in northern Germany) without much fuss.

The lady in the bell is where I lost it. Art ("art"?) is fucking weird.

🤔

I heard a short interview with the opera houses intendant (if I recall correctly) and he was pretty unphased unfazed by this story. He said that it was not uncommon that a few of the 1400 guests of the opera house get nauseous during a show especially on hot days when air gets stale...

Sounded like he wasn't convinced the nausea during the Santa performance was because of the play itself.

*unfazed

"fazed" means "disconcerted or perturbed", just FYI, and I will take my downvotes now

Interesting, never knew.

Here's another one some people have never realized. Literally is not the same word as literately

People in Stuttgart are too sheltered. In Berlin that wouldn't stand out in an average Friday.

In New York City, this is just your average subway commute.

I guess Germans read about the fate of the Eldar & birth of Slaanesh and took that as an instruction guide.

Yeah, I'm sure that's accurate and complete information, and not just a shock horror show fishing for attention.

why would you sign up for something like this if you're a goddamn pussy

It looks like there were warnings in advance too

Visitors to the adults-only show were alerted in advance to a long list of warnings for potential triggers including incense, loud noises, explicit sexual acts and sexual violence.

FWIW, I'm a sideshow performer and have been in shows that were exactly like this (though I don't do full nudity or piercing). There's always a content warning at the top of the show. Though I'm surprised (but not) they allowed live sex. Even where I live, which has pretty lenient blue laws, live sex is a hard no.

Also, this sounds amazing

The version that unsettled audience members in Stuttgart this year supplanted the original musical performance with naked nuns rollerskating on a movable half-pipe at the centre of the stage, a wall of crucified naked bodies and a lesbian priest saying mass.

How are you supposed to know the priest is a lesbian if they didn't tell you?

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live sex ig

Maybe she makes an offhand comment about not being into guys

Maybe she drives a Subaru onstage

How do you know if someone is a nun when they are all naked? 🤔

If you've never seen copious amounts of blood before, you might not know you're a goddamn pussy. I didn't know blood would make me queasy until I was trying to clean glass and blood from the floor before my dogs ran in to see the commotion as the skin on the backs of 2 fingers was flapping and undoing all my blood cleanup. It damaged something in my nail base, too, because I have a scar that ends at a permanent ridge in my nail extrusion.

Why would you shove a toothpick under your toenail and kick the wall as hard as you can if you're a goddamn pussy

I saw something like this at a goth Burlesque in the PNW, with a cheek piercing. I'm not sure what caused so many people in this performance to feel ill though, I don't see many details.

I don't see many details.

They probably saw ALL the details

Once one person gets sick it’s human instinct to follow up.

Yeah it's probably natural to throw up after you smell the first 10 people's vomit :(

Is opera not about the maximal? I think such things absolutely require content warnings, but also that sounds like the sort of show I’d attend (and know people who’d perform in)

How do I see or even find out about crazy shows like this?

Look into regional burns.

Honestly, check with your local alternative community. You probably don’t have anything local, but where the body mod types, performance artists, and bdsm folks interact winds up with shit like thie

LOL! They even have penguins (nuns) on stage.

and copious amounts of fake and real blood

Where did they use the real blood? I thought theaters avoid it because it's really hard to clean and it coagulates after being exposed to air for a while. (though fake blood is also really expensive from what I've heard)

I imagine it's probably something to do with the live piercing, which I assume to be hook pulls? Needle play really icks some people out, but I don't know if it would be visible from an opera stage

Sounds like a Genitorturers concert!

Or a Crash Worship concert.

Now I'd like a similar opera centered around Mohammed to compare the reactions.

Comments from other communities

this is a fascinating article with lots to pick out, and i did like this quote in particular.

"long list of warnings for potential triggers including incense, loud noises, explicit sexual acts and sexual violence."

hope you've steeled yourself to witness intense on-stage fucking, plus sometimes they light incense!

You ready for that?!

Having a warning for that is incredibly important, mostly in cases where people may be allergic or have sensitivity to certain smells. Incense is not something you would expect at a theater performance, so if I went to a showing without that warning, I wouldn't know to take my allergy meds and may have walked out of there with a migraine or needing my inhaler, depending on what kind of incense they used.

If I had a sensitivity to smells I think I'd probably avoid shows known for people masturbating on stage

Fair, but people have sensitivity and allergy to different things. Adding it to an existing list of potential deal breakers for those who would rather not risk their health is a case of cost/benefit: it costs nothing and benefits many.

If you're allergic or have sensitivity to smells, don't go to the experimental explosive fuck theater.

If you're sensitive enough to incense on stage or in theater that it critically physically disrupts your body, it must be difficult for you to even walk down the street alongside traffic fumes.

That's too bad, and it means you don't get to do literally everything; you are too sensitive for some things like extreme art pieces or hindu religious festivals.

You're sensitive and have limitations. you can't fight fires, and if you are truly critically physiologically sensitive to incense, must carry that responsibility around with you rather than expecting every person who uses incense to issue a public trigger warning.

We should not start ear-tagging domestic pets with informational placards for having dander or stapling trees with signs warning you against eating their leaves.

Don't eat their leaves.

trigger warnings are tolerable in certain settings(academia), and in rarer cases have a valid purpose I can get behind(warning labels, employment contracts), but they can quickly become unnecessarily burdensome, and trigger warnings for incidental appearance of incense in live experimental art shows by radical artists can fuck off.

...You are aware of how both allergies and air quality works, right? Also, most shows even in art houses don't include scent effects of any kind, hence the warning. If it were common, the warning would likely be unnecessary.

But lovely of you to claim I am the oversensitive one, as apparently adding a single word to an already existing warning, one that could literally save someone's life by preventing a physical ailment, is too much for you to handle reading!

trigger warnings are not "too much for me", they are simply largely unnecessary.

anybody who wants to put out a trigger warning, good for them.

anybody who doesn't want to put out a trigger warning, good for them.

Huh…I have so much to learn.

“Good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu, but also someone who can urinate on cue,”

"Holzinger, 38, is known for freewheeling performances that blur the line between dance theatre and vaudeville. Her all-female cast typically performs partially or fully naked, and previous shows have included live sword-swallowing, tattooing, masturbation and action paintings with blood and fresh excrement.

“Good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu, but also someone who can urinate on cue,” Holzinger told the Guardian in an interview earlier this year."

That's hilarious

action paintings with blood and fresh excitement.

Why is it always goddamn Germany?

If the artists can live out their bloody fantasies in the safety of an opera house, they might not take over the country and commit genocide, again.

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Um... you might want to re-read that. It's not as uh.. "exciting" as you might think.

German art at its finest!

The whole production sounds pretty edgey.

Quick search. Yeah, the naked nuns rollerskating down a half-pipe is real.

And no, will not be posting links, you pervs.

Here's the link.

Love ya, pervs 😘

The main image in the article is amazing. Two people making out in front of nuns and a robot. Looks like a blast.

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Take it to 11 and eat some shrooms before

I wonder how extreme the piercings were. What qualifies as extreme to the Germans..

Long syringes into the glutamis maximus? Or syringes piercing labia? Youchie.

Extreme like metal chopsticks thru cheeks?

Extreme like suspending people by hooks into their backs? Cuz that's just a Tuesday for some people.

Or maybe running a sword between the liver and kidneys? It can be done, just thru flesh, missing the internal organs. I'd call that pretty extreme, none of which would make me nauseous tho. Degloving is the only thing that's made my stomach physically feel like it was turning over, and if you don't know what that is, I don't recommend finding out.

I heard from friends who went there that yes people were actually hooked. Additionally they tore some flesh out of an artist and proceeded in a later scene to bbq and eat it.

That's pretty foul. I have some sympathy for the patrons if that's the case. Nowhere that I read was cannibalism mentioned. I'd argue arresting those involved if that's the truth. Prions are fucking deadly serious and survive outside the body, after a person dies, and until picked up by something else. And they'll hop species too. The literal embodiment of the dark world, just pure evil anti-life. There's a proper analogy in some video game somewhere that I'm not finding at the moment...idk. it's like, imagine every prion is a burnt out crystal on an LCD screen. Once there's enough out there...it's game over.

Prions are extremely scary but rare. In the event they start becoming more widespread, there's no reason to think we couldn't invent treatments for the condition. Whether by specifically targeting the misfolded proteins, or by removing the vulnerable protein from the body

Man I like your optimism, I do. I hope you're right. Actually I hope you never need to be proven right 👍

IMO prions are like a IRL glitch. It seems like a bug without any direction, intentions whatsoever.

And, as usual, those opera tickets are taxpayer-subsidised with €200-300 *per ticket*. That is the normal going rate for opera houses in Germany. The guests only pay €20-50.

Worst case of opera subsidies in Germany will be Cologne - they are currently renovating the opera house. It should have been finished ten years ago for 250M€, now they *hope* to finish renovating next year, for a whopping total of 1.5B€. All paid for by the tax payer. Which, if distributed over 30 years means that each ticket is taxpayer-subsidised with €300-400 just for the cost of the renovation of the house.

So what you're saying is, such renovations obviously could only take place with government tax dollars, since as a private enterprise there's no way they could make it work? And this relatively small amount of spending in the grand scheme of the tax system helps keep the local arts flourishing?

Sounds like the tax system is working!

Edit: forgot to add, it also supports the construction workers, restoration workers, the places of business where materials were sourced, pumps money into the local economy, and preserves the buildings as cultural landmarks.

But what if that money goes to art I don't personally like?

Oh no no, don't worry. Your pennies only paid for the art you like, other people paid for that weird stuff. That's the best part of money, once you throw it all in a pile Scrooge McDuck style, it all looks the same!

And this relatively small amount of spending

This money is not provided by the federal government, or even the state. It is paid for by the city of Cologne.

1.5B€ is quite a burden on the finances of a *city*. Even if it is a large city. All for the benefit of a small elite, as normal people don't watch operas.

The cost was spread over several years. And at 25€ a ticket this doesn't just serve the elite. The building is also a cultural landmark, so preserving it is of social interest, and the money spent went straight back into the local economy, where it was swiftly taxed again.

These arguments are lazy, find better ones.

And at 25€ a ticket this doesn’t just serve the elite.

Have you ever seen the people who go into the opera?

The cost was spread over several years.

Yes, if you would spread it over 30 years, it would still be €300-400 per ticket.

Find better excuses for wasting taxpayers money on a handful of peoples entertainment.

That a private enterprise wouldn't be able to make this work should give us a hint that it doesn't benefit enough people for it to be worthwhile, opera is a luxury good consumed by relatively few, relatively affluent people. Why should the taxpayer subsidize their hobby? Actors don't need a billion dollar opera house to perform, they could do it in a school auditorium if necessary. Those tax dollars could have been spent on any number of other things like healthcare and education.

When the tickets are only €25 it's not just for the rich. The opera house is a cultural landmark, preserving it serves the public. And it was 1.5B spread over several years, not all at once.

Honestly, the 'money on art bad' argument is not a good line here.

Making it cheaper doesn't change people's taste, it's still mostly for the rich, now they're just getting a subsidy they didn't need from the taxpayer. If people want to spend their money on art that's perfectly fine, what I'm objecting to is the taxpayer being obligated to do so.