A controversial Nazi-themed production of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser has been cancelled after it caused some audience members to seek medical help and prompted others to walk out in anger.
The Rheinoper in Düsseldorf said it was in a state of shock after being deluged with complaints by members of the public who called the opera tasteless and unnecessarily provocative.
The production, which opened last Saturday and was expected to be one of the highlights of the celebrations for the bicentenary of Wagner's birth later this month, has a Nazi storyline, and includes scenes of people dying in gas chambers, being shot and raped, and of members of a family having their heads shaved before their execution.
The leader of the west German city's Jewish community, Michael Szentei-Heise, said members of the audience had booed and banged the doors, leaving the performance before the end. The theatre confirmed there had been "much booing and shocked audience members".
Some opera goers were said to be so traumatised they had to receive medical assistance. The director of the opera house, Christoph Meyer, said his company had not meant to offend, and its purpose had been to "mourn, not mock" victims of the Holocaust. The production, by director Burkhard C Kosminski, is said to have bombarded the audience with shocking Holocaust imagery from the start.
The opening scene depicts singers inside glass containers dropping to the floor as they are enveloped in a white fog – a clear allusion to the gas chambers that killed millions in Nazi death camps.
Another scene that caused some in the audience to gasp and cover their faces was one in which an entire family had their heads shaved before being shot dead.
In a statement, Rheinoper's managers acknowledged that they had always accepted that the production would be controversial, "but it's with great regret that we now react to the fact that some scenes, in particular the very realistically portrayed shooting scene, caused such strong psychological and physical reactions in some visitors that some of them had to be taken into medical care".
Szentei-Heise told German media that the production had strayed so far from the original intentions of Wagner, who wrote it as a romantic opera in the 1840s and set it in the Middle Ages, that it was implausible.
"This opera has nothing to do with the Holocaust," he said. "But I think that the audience has made this very clear to the opera house and the director." From now on, the production will only be performed by Rheinoper as a concert.
