With Les Incrédules, director Samuel Achache returns to the Festival d’Avignon with his most ambitious project to date: a two-hour opera featuring 52 musicians and a hybrid form that blends theatre, music, and philosophical inquiry.
The premise is deceptively simple yet surreal: a woman receives a phone call announcing her mother’s death at the exact moment the mother walks through the door. From this absurd contradiction, Achache—working with Sarah Le Picard, Florent Hubert, and Antonin-Tri Hoang—spins a meditation on doubt, perception, and the slipperiness of reality.
Achache has said he believes doubt is what keeps us alive, and that life is a bit like a bad detective novel—strange, fragmented, full of contradictions, but still something we’re compelled to keep reading. This existential uncertainty underpins Les Incrédules, where the improbable and the tragic coexist in a universe governed more by emotional logic than narrative clarity.
The piece features overlapping layers of dialogue and music, with characters often doubled or even tripled between actors and opera singers. Lines are spoken, sung, then repeated in another form. The result is kaleidoscopic—but also, at times, repetitive and emotionally distancing.
While the set design is visually refined—dominated by textured grey panels that can open or close to create shifting spaces—the narrative struggles to maintain momentum. The musical elements are impressive: the orchestra includes saxophone, accordion, percussion, and even a custom-built instrument designed to generate unpredictable sounds, reflecting the theme of uncertainty. Moments of absurdist humour and stylised physicality add levity and inventiveness.
Yet, despite these flashes of brilliance, Les Incrédules doesn’t quite sustain its philosophical or emotional weight. Its central idea—that life resists coherence and that we live by questioning—is intellectually engaging, but the dramaturgical execution feels meandering. The production excels in form, but often falters in feeling.
Still, Les Incrédules deserves recognition for its ambition. It seeks not to tell a conventional story, but to theatrically embody the experience of doubt—an idea rarely explored on this scale. Whether or not it fully succeeds, it is a work that challenges both performers and audience to sit with ambiguity, and to find beauty—or at least curiosity—in uncertainty.
Résumé en français
Avec Les Incrédules, Samuel Achache signe une œuvre à la fois ambitieuse et déroutante. Une femme apprend la mort de sa mère… au moment même où celle-ci entre dans la pièce. De cette situation absurde, le metteur en scène et ses collaborateurs (Sarah Le Picard, Florent Hubert, Antonin-Tri Hoang) créent un opéra où le tragique et l’improbable se croisent sans cesse.
Animée par une conviction que le doute est ce qui nous maintient en vie, la pièce embrasse l’absurde comme principe narratif. Sur scène, les personnages sont démultipliés, les dialogues parlés puis chantés, souvent fragmentés. Le tout soutenu par une impressionnante formation de 52 musiciens, incluant saxophone, accordéon, percussions, et un instrument original conçu pour produire des sons aléatoires.
Si certaines trouvailles musicales ou visuelles séduisent, la dramaturgie peine à s’imposer. L’œuvre interroge plus qu’elle ne touche, explore plus qu’elle ne raconte. Les Incrédules est une proposition audacieuse, parfois frustrante, mais qui mérite d’être saluée pour sa tentative de donner corps à l’incertitude.
Details
Les Incrédules
Director: Samuel Achache
Country: France / Created in 2025
Festival: Festival d’Avignon
Venue: Opéra du Grand Avignon
Cast & Orchestra:
With the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Nancy-Lorraine, Jeanne Mendoche, Majdouline Zerari, René Ramos Premier, Margot Alexandre, Sarah Le Picard, Marie Lambert, Pierre Fourcade, Antonin-Tri Hoang, Sébastien Innocenti, Thibault Perriard
Musical Direction: Nicolas Chesneau
Libretto: Samuel Achache & Sarah Le Picard, in collaboration with Margot Alexandre, Thibault Perriard & Julien Vella
Composition: Florent Hubert & Antonin-Tri Hoang
Orchestration: Pierre-Antoine Badaroux
Production: Opéra national de Nancy-Lorraine
Coproduction: Opéra national du Rhin