Originally planned for April 2005 at La Scala, the double bill Sancta Susanna / Il dissoluto assolto was cancelled when Riccardo Muti refused to attend the rehearsals after orchestra members declared that they would go on strike on opening night of all upcoming productions.

Problems between the conductor and the orchestra notoriously led to Muti's resignation; the Maestro then conducted Sancta Susanna at the Ravenna Festival during the summer of 2005, while the world premiere of Il dissoluto assolto took place in Lisbon at about the same time.

The new administration of La Scala decided to stage the double bill in this season, even if the stage director Giancarlo Cobelli refused to direct the production without Muti. He was replaced in Milan by Patrizia Frini, who used the sets originally designed for Cobelli and essentially reproduced his concept.

Paul Hindemith composed Sancta Susanna as part of a trilogy, which also included Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen and Das Nusch-Nuschi. These two works premiered in 1921, but Sancta Susanna was not performed because of its obscene content. A few years later, Hindemith decided to withdraw it because he now thought that it was too shocking.

The action takes place in a nunnery, where a nun, Sister Klementia, tells the younger and highly mystical Susanna a story she witnessed years before, when Sister Beata came naked into the church and embraced the crucifix; she was then walled up alive in punishment. Excited, Susanna identifies herself with Beata, undresses looking at the crucifix, and, when the mother superior steps in, raving asks to be walled up alive.

Hindemith's expressionistic music is partly atonal and highly dramatic, and calls for perfectly tuned voices, as were those of Tatiana Serjan (Susanna) and Brigitte Pinter (Klementia). The sets by Alessandro Ciammarughi consisted in an enormous golden frame on the background; inside the frame Susanna's wildest fantasy materialized (a couple having sex, perhaps Adam and Eve), or magnified the interior setting of the church (a giant spider crossing the altar, the crucifix shining with lights in the darkness).

Conductor Marco Letonja conducted with the necessary tension and kept the audience breathless for the duration of the opera.