Directors Junior Mthombeni and Michael De Cock unite a megacast bursting with talent and contemporary music producers giving Dido and Aeneas by baroque composer Henry Purcell a turn. Grand, generous and groundbreaking. 

Classical live musicians and artists reinterpret Purcell. Together they bring the story of Hannibal, the Punic wars, and the birth of Europe. In the third century B.C., the Carthaginian commander Hannibal Barca started his vertiginous journey: he led his troops through Spain, France, and Italy, in a quest that shook the Roman empire’s very foundations. Hannibal ad portas!

At a time when war once again rages on European soil and refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean, Hannibal takes on a haunting relevance. The performance exposes how fear and the hunger for power keep shaping history – how myths and propaganda are used to create enemies and justify borders. What does “civilization” mean when people are dying at Europe’s gates? Hannibal confronts the audience with the question of whether, thousands of years after the journey of the Carthaginian general, we have truly learned anything from our own history. Through a unique synergy of opera and slam poetry, contemporary dance and acting, the piece opens a window onto the past, present, and future of Europe.

In Hannibal, artists from Africa and Europe combine contemporary video and projection techniques with traditional live painting and acoustic instruments. Performed by many, following a shared heartbeat. Featuring mezzosoprano Raphaële Green, singer Gala Dragot, harpist Jutta Troch, actors Marios Bellas and Alix Konadu, dancer Zach Swagga, visual artist Elke Gijsemans, Justine Bourgeus (Tsar B), Abel Baeck (NO LABEL) and many others. Several of the artists are part of the SOCHA collective, a joint project by Junior Mthombeni and Tom Kestens.

The presentation of this project was made possible thanks to PROSPERO NEW Platform, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

The press about Hannibal

“Cissokho’s string playing makes you glow, Dido’s iconic aria makes you shiver, Gala Dragot’s hypnotic indictment of ‘Masters of War’ – together with the great Choeur Cassandra Choir of La Monnaie - lingers, the talent and hunger for life are evident everywhere. Hannibal is intense, colossal, and multifaceted.” - De Standaard

“With the same audacity as Clément Cogitore and his Indes Galantes, which in 2019 turned the cultural boundaries of opera and Krump dance upside down, Hannibal continues the great opera operation to break open opera.” - Classykeo 

“[Hannibal succeeds] as a reckoning with all the war violence to this day. With the rhetoric and dehumanization that precedes it, and with the hopeless misery and total destruction that follows.” – Bruzz 

“Hannibal makes it fully felt that polyphony is not merely a socio-political extra, but also pure artistic gain. One large Gesamtkunstwerk against all indifference, against all toxic opposition. And if such a work moreover carries the deep imprint of its time, then that is nothing but publicity for all theatre. ‘Hannibal’ has it. This ‘technopera’ has me completely.” – Pzazz

“The intensity of the performance transcends words and leaves you with a sense of urgency. [Hannibal is] a performance that balances between personal sacrifices, inescapable destinies, and the ever-recurring question of why history keeps repeating itself.” - ETCETERA