With L’Empereur d’Atlantis preceded by En vertu de…, Belgian-Luxembourgish director Stéphane Ghislain Roussel presents a socially engaged operatic diptych, a veritable journey through time and space. Two strikingly topical pieces, performed in two venues in Geneva, the international and cultural capital, for an evening devoted to historical and political reflection.

The first part will take place in the Assembly Hall of the UN Palais des Nations, where En vertu de... by young composer Eugen Birman will be performed. It is the ideal setting for this piece for baritone, instrumental ensemble and live electronics, which questions the meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights in light of the rise of extremism around the world.

Then it's off to the Comédie de Genève for the second part, Viktor Ullmann's chamber opera L'Empereur d'Atlantis, composed in 1943 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The Emperor Overall, who declares war on everyone and thus provokes a strike of death, is played by Michel de Souza – the soloist who also delivers the speech in the first part – as if he were the same character displaced in time. The diptych then takes on its full meaning: is there only a short distance between the turmoil of democracy and the drift towards authoritarianism?