Wine Into Blood

Prinzendorf is a Baroque palace in the Weinviertel region of Lower Austria, a good hour’s drive north of Vienna. In the 1970s, performance artist Hermann Nitsch purchased the estate and repeatedly staged his Orgien Mysterien Theater there—performative festivals where a well-heeled audience could experience a blend of theater, art creation, the search for meaning, and culinary delights. Such events continued until Nitsch’s death in 2022, becoming increasingly large-scale and spectacular; even later, his widow, Rita Nitsch, had the 6-Tage-Spiel performed once more. Now she plans to transform Prinzendorf Palace into a venue for performance art—a move that will likely entail further evolution, given that the Nitsch aesthetic sought to provoke a visceral response through blood, transgression, ...