Mea Culpa

Opera Mea Culpa by Christoph Schlingensief, opening performance of Holland Festival 2011.
The Holland Festival 2011 opens with Mea Culpa by German director Christoph Schlingensief. Mea Culpa is the last work in which the German director stages ‘a social sculpture of his own disease’. Here, Schlingensief rises above his own pain and creates a readymade opera about life, death and mortality, containing a multitude of layers and perspectives. The music ranges from Wagner to Roy Orbison. The references extend from Joseph Beuys to Friedrich Nietzsche. The anger and rebellion of Eine Kirche der Angst vor dem Fremden in mir, part of the 2009 Holland Festival, has made way for reconciliation with the finite nature of life.