Santa Susanna

A storm of reactions caused by the statement of Hollywood star Timothy Chalamet about the irrelevance of opera and ballet, "arts that no one is interested in," points to existential questions around which music creators themselves argue, always looking for new ways to expand and/or rethink the very form of the genre. The work of futurists from the beginning of the 20th century and Luigi Russolo's manifesto "The Art of Noises," Edgar Varèse's stance on concert halls as mausoleums of music, remind us that this kind of polemic is not new. Opera, as a comprehensive form, has always been open to experimentation: from Stockhausen's year-long cycle project to the influence of German "Regie-theater," the latest form of expanding the genre itself and searching for a new comprehensive work of art is today's opera-performance. One such project is Marina Abramović's recent *Balkan Erotic Epic* (which we wrote about in the pages of the Supplement), in which performance art, theater, music, dance, and film intertwine. In that spirit, the new performance by Austrian artist Florentina Holtzinger, *Sancta*, builds on these postulates, inspired by Abramović's art (but not exclusively), creating a more radical approach that also aims to merge the mentioned genres in its form. These two artists meet in a way at the recently opened Venice Biennale, where Holtzinger represents her country, Austria, while Marina Abramović has her retrospective at the Venice Academy Gallery for her 80th birthday.