Genesi binds historical fact and Biblical legends, famous figures and mythical monsters into a dreamlike narrative inspired by the first book of the Bible. Director and writer Romeo Castellucci’s dramatic triptych begins in the laboratory of Marie Curie, where Satan himself is overlooking the eminent scientist as she discovers radioactivity, and thus an energy that could make mankind equal to God.

Concerned with both the morality of science and the cycles of creation and destruction it turns, Genesi then moves into the disturbing territory of Auschwitz, where cruelty and inhumanity have apparently triumphed over science’s Utopian ideals. Eventually ending as a retelling of the story of Cain and Abel, Societas Raffaelo Sanzio raises questions of guilt, responsibility and whether mankind really carries an inerasable curse. With paintings, choreography and music at once as bleak and perversely beautiful as Castellucci’s dramatic vision, Genesi is a glimpse of heaven and hell that lingers as long as a nightmare in the mind.