Once upon a time, there were twenty-five consultants at the opera.

Admittedly, it sounds like the beginning of a (somewhat strange) joke, but it is just the opposite.

On a drizzly November evening, the IDEA team left their post-it notes, PowerPoints and policy reports behind in the corridors of consultancy life for an evening at La Monnaie. Many colleagues were present for a few hours in the red velvet seats of the Brussels theatre – opera novices, enthusiasts and die-hard fans alike. And rightly so, as it turned out, because the performance was a huge success.

“Ali” tells the true story of Ali Abdi Omar, who himself collaborated on this production. As a child, he escaped the terror in his Somali homeland via the only route open to him: a dizzying odyssey from the Horn of Africa to the heart of Europe. Along the way, amid violence, deprivation and uncertainty, he finds unexpected forms of solidarity. Friendships become lifelines, hope a silent companion. It takes him two years to reach Brussels-South. All alone. It is 2019. Ali is fourteen.

Director Ricard Soler Mallol turned this journey into an opera that sharply exposes today’s geopolitical fault lines and left many IDEA colleagues deeply moved. With a glass in hand, we shared what words could not express: this was a performance that got under our skin and still resonates today.