An electric guitar and a likembe, positioned at opposite sides of the stage, answer one another as they perform the overture to Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. This opening scene of Coup Fatal encapsulates the spirit of a production that transforms musical encounter and hybridity into the very substance of a celebration charged with infectious energy.

Born in 2014 from the meeting between guitarist Rodriguez Vangama, saxophonist Fabrizio Cassol and choreographer Alain Platel, Coup Fatal belongs as much to opera as it does to the concert hall, as much to ballet as to collective celebration. Thirteen musicians, most of them from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, weave together influences ranging from Nina Simone to Christoph Willibald Gluck and Antonio Vivaldi. Great Baroque arias are infused with the rhythms of Congolese rumba, while operatic voices intertwine with traditional songs to create an unprecedented musical and theatrical language.

Two years after its recreation at Comédie de Genève, and following an extensive international tour, the production returns this season with the same generosity and the same invitation, more relevant than ever, to embrace the blending and interweaving of voices, cultures and histories.