Having a warning for that is incredibly important, mostly in cases where people may be allergic or have sensitivity to certain smells. Incense is not something you would expect at a theater performance, so if I went to a showing without that warning, I wouldn't know to take my allergy meds and may have walked out of there with a migraine or needing my inhaler, depending on what kind of incense they used.
If you're allergic or have sensitivity to smells, don't go to the experimental explosive fuck theater.
If you're sensitive enough to incense on stage or in theater that it critically physically disrupts your body, it must be difficult for you to even walk down the street alongside traffic fumes.
That's too bad, and it means you don't get to do literally everything; you are too sensitive for some things like extreme art pieces or hindu religious festivals.
You're sensitive and have limitations. you can't fight fires, and if you are truly critically physiologically sensitive to incense, must carry that responsibility around with you rather than expecting every person who uses incense to issue a public trigger warning.
We should not start ear-tagging domestic pets with informational placards for having dander or stapling trees with signs warning you against eating their leaves.
Don't eat their leaves.
trigger warnings are tolerable in certain settings(academia), and in rarer cases have a valid purpose I can get behind(warning labels, employment contracts), but they can quickly become unnecessarily burdensome, and trigger warnings for incidental appearance of incense in live experimental art shows by radical artists can fuck off.
"Holzinger, 38, is known for freewheeling performances that blur the line between dance theatre and vaudeville. Her all-female cast typically performs partially or fully naked, and previous shows have included live sword-swallowing, tattooing, masturbation and action paintings with blood and fresh excrement.
“Good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu, but also someone who can urinate on cue,” Holzinger told the Guardian in an interview earlier this year."
And, as usual, those opera tickets are taxpayer-subsidised with €200-300 per ticket. That is the normal going rate for opera houses in Germany. The guests only pay €20-50.
Worst case of opera subsidies in Germany will be Cologne - they are currently renovating the opera house. It should have been finished ten years ago for 250M€, now they hope to finish renovating next year, for a whopping total of 1.5B€. All paid for by the tax payer. Which, if distributed over 30 years means that each ticket is taxpayer-subsidised with €300-400 just for the cost of the renovation of the house.
So what you're saying is, such renovations obviously could only take place with government tax dollars, since as a private enterprise there's no way they could make it work? And this relatively small amount of spending in the grand scheme of the tax system helps keep the local arts flourishing?
Sounds like the tax system is working!
Edit: forgot to add, it also supports the construction workers, restoration workers, the places of business where materials were sourced, pumps money into the local economy, and preserves the buildings as cultural landmarks.
This money is not provided by the federal government, or even the state. It is paid for by the city of Cologne.
1.5B€ is quite a burden on the finances of a city. Even if it is a large city. All for the benefit of a small elite, as normal people don't watch operas.
That a private enterprise wouldn't be able to make this work should give us a hint that it doesn't benefit enough people for it to be worthwhile, opera is a luxury good consumed by relatively few, relatively affluent people. Why should the taxpayer subsidize their hobby? Actors don't need a billion dollar opera house to perform, they could do it in a school auditorium if necessary. Those tax dollars could have been spent on any number of other things like healthcare and education.