Ideas

Ecstatic return to the Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries, Nitsch's last festival

Nitsch Foundation organised a revival of the last days of the extreme work '6-Tage-Spiel'

by Luca Siniscalco

24 June 2025

6' min read

Key points

Nitsch Foundation
An orchestra of some ninety members.

6' min read

In the Austrian town of Prinzerdorf an der Zaya, fifty minutes from Vienna, words are heard in all European languages. But above them all, a single timbre rises up, dramatic, intense, roaring: the organ of Hermann Nitsch, who, who passed away on 18 April 2022, is as alive as ever in the looks and breaths of those gathered.

From all over the world, passionate, curious, enthusiastic people gathered, moved by the desire to break out of the post-bourgeois and algorithmic routine of the contemporary workshop-world to access a truer, more authentic, spring-like experience, the one that artist Hermann Nitsch synthesised in his Orgies and Mysteries Theatre (Orgien Mysterien Theater - OMT, in shareholder jargon).

L’inno panico di Hermann Nitsch
Photogallery27 foto

Nitsch Foundation

From 7 to 9 June 2025, in fact, the Nitsch Foundation, animated by the indefatigable energy and stubborn vitality of his widow Rita, has organised a repetition of the last days of Nitsch's extreme work, the '6-Tage-Spiel', the six-day continuous performance that the artist managed to organise in its entirety only once during his lifetime, in 1998 (from 3 to 9 August to be precise). For organisational and financial reasons, the Foundation decided to break up the mammoth work, destined to be Nitsch's last action, No. 160: the first two days took place in June 2022, the third in May 2023, and today the work finds its completion.

In it, the controversial Austrian artist, a leading exponent of Viennese Actionism and the 'black beast' of petty-bourgeois and puritanical conservatism, hybridised his greatest passions - theatre, music and action painting. The result: a unique synaesthetic work, capable of realising the Wagnerian dream of the 'total work of art' (Gesamtkunstwerk) in a gory version, with extensive use of dismembered animal bodies. The OMT blends multiple aesthetic and philosophical inspirations, drawn from heterogeneous sources: in it we find the magisteriums of the aforementioned Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Stefan George, as well as images from Greek tragedy and Christian iconography, the hierophanies of myth, and the insights of the artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century. And all these fragmentary images become One in Nitsch's Philosophy of Being.

An orchestra of some ninety members

The fil rouge around which all these themes become art is music. An orchestra of some ninety members dialogues with Nitsch's organ music, which some speakers in the Prinzerdorf garden make resound incessantly throughout the three days. Occasionally, drums, gongs, bells make their entrance. Andrea Cusumano, the conductor, a pupil and friend of Nitsch, masterfully directs the orchestra from an elevated podium, with its minimalist motifs - mostly clusters - and sometimes apocalyptic tension effects.

Entering Prinzerdorf, one drinks in Nitsch's dream: to evoke a collective rite, a liturgy of the whole being, pantheistically experienced through the five senses, for the evocation of a transcendence that, in the age of post-secularisation, can only be immanent, carnal, sensual, "neo-tribal", as Michel Maffesoli puts it. The volumetry of bodies is Nitsch's immanent mysticism. The form thus discloses the sacred, the encounter with that "tremendous and fascinating mystery" (Rudolf Otto) that the experience of the "disenchantment of the world" (Max Weber) has forgotten.

Nitsch made many variants of the OMT, of heterogeneous duration and adaptable to different places - galleries, museums, churches, open-air spaces... His masterpiece, however, the project of a lifetime, can only last six days - like the days of creation according to Genesis, like the movements of a symphony.

Here, the thirteen 'Leimotiven' that Nitsch thematised in his theoretical writings - recurring mythical-dramatic motifs that illustrate the evolution of the human psyche and the cosmos simultaneously - find their highest dramatisation.

The production, based on a score of more than 1,000 pages, brings shocking and moving scenes to life: crucified performers, pig carcasses, exposed internal organs and fruit, extravagant flower arrangements are contemplated by a community of performance experts, art world professionals, curious young people and loyal Nitsch fans.

Being, in its kaleidoscopic metamorphosis, manifests itself as an aesthetic-symbolic event: it is a feast, a rite, a collective event celebrating life.

Hermann Nitsch. Foto: eSeL

The actions within the OMT, directed by Nitsch's adopted son Leonhard Kopp, are punctuated by the alternation of convivial moments: participants enjoy immense quantities of food, served in buffet mode, with traditionally Austrian flavours. One breathes in the atmosphere of the Heuriger, the typical taverns where lots of wine and specialities of local gastronomy are consumed on the Austrian hillsides. These moments are also part of Nitsch's creation. An art that coincides with life is celebrated - nothing more, nothing less. Thus, for the time of the celebration, a small community arises: many participants and actors, 'Nitschians' of the first hour, already know each other, new understandings quickly arise among the others. Everyday anxieties are left behind, one opens oneself unconditionally to others, without fear of telling. Here, only the moment counts - no one wants to let it go. This is Faust's obsession, his thirst for the eternal moment. But Nitsch believes he has found the key to access it. This key has a name: mysticism of being. That is, the set of existential techniques for recognising in one's own self nothing other than eternal being, the whole, the cosmos. It seems to resonate with the Vedantic motto 'Tat tvam asi' - 'you are this' - which so influenced Ernst Jünger, among others.

Here, in Prinzerdorf Castle, many know Nitsch's philosophy and take it seriously. For others, it is clearly a matter of partying, of taking part in a unique, bizarre, 'alternative' event. But in the end, they too confirm the artist's intuition. Life, this explosion of shapes and colours, is to be taken as an intensification of the original excess. The rest is but an intellectualistic embroidery - necessary, in preparation, to bring us closer to this mystery, but destined to be continually overtaken by the consistency of existence, by its virulent cogency.

Hermann Nitsch. Foto: eSeL

The first day - the fourth of the '6-Tage-Spiel' - runs under a blinding sun. The scorching heat amplifies the sensations. The actors, after the washing of the feet, begin the 'actions': organic materials - entrails, fish, eggs, grapes, tomatoes - arranged on some tables are torn apart, animal blood flows, the first crucifixions of the blindfolded actors take place, processions in the castle and then outside, in the vineyards, to touch, on the hills, the sky. People drink, dance, experiment. Life is ritually exposed in its rawness, in its intrinsic relationship with death, until dinner, followed by improvised dances. A band plays festive folk music - the epic tone of the day declines into the serenity of a country festival.

But the epic nature of the event re-emerges the next morning, in the downpour.

The action moves underground, into the castle cellars. Nekuia, kathabasis, nigredo, dark night of the soul: myth and mysticism have dramatised with these terms the inner excavation of the negative, the descent into the underworld of our self. We confront ourselves, in the dark, with our own abysses, illuminated by the torches held by the actor-heroes. These seem like shining swords in the darkest night. The liturgy unfolds as usual: three crucified bodies sacrifice themselves for the rebirth of life - a panic hymn - embodied by the blindfolded and crucified actor who, soiled with blood, is led to see the light again, out of this symbolic cave, with its Platonic echoes.

The actions resume on the surface. It is an incessant succession of slashes and crucifixions, until the symbolic climax: the reunification of the male-female dyad in the mystery of the unity of the whole - what Jung, Nitsch's beloved author, called the 'mysterium coniunctionis'. All opposites are transfigured into the One. The sun returns to illuminate the rainy day and an atmosphere of enthralling joy envelops all participants. The atmosphere lasts until the following day, the sixth, the 'day of resurrection', in which all violence is sublimated into light: the music is filled with joy, the flowers, the vigorous naked bodies, the monstrance, the festive kitchen, everything speaks of the wisdom of that 'cosmic Christianity' of which paganism and Revelation are a living symbiosis.

The artistic performance transitions into a celebration in which people carefree enjoy the detachment from daily worries. Wine, 'Sautanz' (the ritual killing of a pig with immediate slaughter and festive consumption of its meat) and gypsy music complete the event.

Linguistic Babylon fades into the organ. Silence returns to Prinzerdorf. Images, emotions, forms, symbols are reabsorbed into the unity of being, the true protagonist of Nitsch's aesthetics. The participants, initiated into this primordial knowledge, return to their respective lives. But their voices, no doubt, will resonate differently.