CCMusic.com

Recorded in 2012, Musik Der 135. Aktion, Kuba captures the controversial performance from Herman Nitsch's Orgien Mysterien Theater ("Orgies Mysteries Theater") as part of the Havana Biennial art exhibition. For more than fifty years Nitsch has been an influential and striking figure of Austrian art ("Vienna Actionism"). In his Orgien Mysterien Theater Nitsch uses actors, blood, animal bodies and entrails, fruits, symbolic crucifixion, music, processions, and ritualistic gestures to enact a new form of Gesamtkunstwerk: pagan ceremonies that aim to a kind of collective catharsis. "Dionysos gegen den Gekreuzigten" ("Dionysus against Christ Crucified") was performed by 150 musicians and 30 actors, including the University's Symphony Orchestra ISA and the artist himself, celebrating Afro-Cuban rituals and ceremonies. Released In cooperation with Nitsch Foundation.