There is no need to introduce one of the most well-known of all French novels. Here, we have an adaptation by a Flemish author and Catalan director. In their version, Michael De Cock and Carme Portaceli transform the licentious Emma, often perceived as a hopeless romantic, into a figure of female emancipation. A rebel, assuming her sexuality and refusing the bourgeois role life has assigned her, Emma, played by Maaike Neuville, suffers less from tragedy than she brazenly chooses catastrophe. Constructed as a duet with Charles—Koen De Sutter—and accompanied by lyrical singer Ana Naqe, this performance endows Flaubert’s story with a striking and surprising modernity.