Somewhere between political impotence and emotional overpressure, Richard Wagner's musical colossus gets a crack. How does it feel when something is torn but not yet broken? Tristan and Isolde's death-defying love story generates a Nadryw - the dizzying, straddling opening into which everyone wants to peer but has not yet dared.

"I am the Nadryw. I am all your pain,
your symptom, your overflowing heart!"

With HAUEN-UND-STECHEN, Theater HORA from Zurich liberate Wagner's opera from its high-cultural corset and drown in its intoxicating emotionality. Together with the audience they drink Isolde's love potion and navigate in a huge whale installation through an ocean of euphoria, depression, lust, hate and shame. Wagner's music becomes a weapon to disrupt privileged conversations and challenge tacit liberal understandings. Conventional discussion is no longer possible with so much shouting. Language here is slapstick, intensity is trump. It's about unabashed self-communication and vulgar expression of emotion, and at the same time about a real utopia.