co-directed the Vienna State Opera and created the sets and costumes for Jules Massenet's opera Hérodiade. In 2001, Nitsch was responsible for the stage design and costumes for the performance of the Gandhi opera Satyagraha by the American composer Philip Glass in the Festspielhaus St. Pölten in Lower Austria. In 2005, he created the equipment for Igor Stravinsky's Le Renard. In 2007, he directed the scenes from Goethe's Faust by Robert Schumann at the Zurich Opera House. In 2011 he was responsible for the scenic conception, design, stage design, and costumes for Saint François d’Assise by Olivier Messiaen at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Nitsch's worldview was strongly influenced by mystical authors, but also by de Sade, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Antonin Artaud, among others. In his theoretical book Orgien-Mysterien-Theater, Nitsch stated that his actions and images should first cause disgust in the audience, then catharsis. The combining of real animal carcasses and real blood with religious content such as the crucifixion and the immaculate conception were consciously used by Nitsch in order to bring the viewer to reflect on symbolic topoi such as blood and death that are often repressed in everyday life, which also play a central role in Christianity. Christian viewers and numerous critics perceived his actions and works as blasphemy. In addition to his theater of orgies and mysteries, Nitsch was also active as a composer and writer. His actions are noted in meticulously notated scores which, in addition to instructions and texts, also contain graphically notated pieces of music. Because he offended not only animal rights activists, but also theologians and representatives of public morality, his work is highly controversial. Conversely, some action and performance artists, including former comrades-in-arms, distance themselves from what they consider to be the overly religious element of his work. In terms of content, his art at Prinzendorf Castle can certainly be interpreted as an attempt at a counter to Richard Wagner's Bayreuth. From November 1988 to January 1989, the Städtische Galerie in the Lenbachhaus in Munich showed some of the artist's works as part of the solo exhibition "Nitsch - Das Bildnerische Werk". He performed the "2-day game" campaign in summer 2004. On 19 November 2005, the 122nd action of the Orgies-Mysteries-Theater took place at Vienna's Burgtheater as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations for the reopening after World War II. On 24 May 2007, the “Hermann Nitsch