Coup Fatal

‘Coup Fatal’ is a real invitation to celebrate, between European baroque music and traditional Congolese music, with the young counter-tenor Serge Kakudji and an orchestra of 12 musicians from Kinshasa.

Giving musicians from Kinshasa (traditional musicians from folk dance and jazz) the baroque repertoire to perform was a unique idea that will nevertheless be no surprise to audiences used to shows by Alain Platel. In ‘vsprs’ and ‘pitié!’, he stripped the arias of Monteverdi and Bach from their sacred vestments to extract a more direct and familiar energy, ripe for experimentation in a mixed form of dance. It was precisely during the tour of ‘pitié! that the counter-tenor Serge Kakudji, supported by the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels, had the idea of sharing opera arias with other musicians. A workshop was set up in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the European baroque repertoire was filtered through the country’s musical culture. Fabrizio Cassol quickly joined the project, followed by Alain Platel. ‘Coup fatal’ is above all a concert, composed over a number of discussions, encounters and meetings. It is also the expression of a joy that laughs in the face of death and violence, represented onstage by a curtain of bullet casings in the background. A joy that emerges from the intersection of revelation – love at first sight – and fatality, which Alain Platel was committed to sharing, as a message more powerful than regular demonstrations of sorrow and compassion.