The curtains part slowly on a darkened stage, lit only by flickering candles and hung all around with huge, solemn-faced busts of Johann Sebastien Bach.
A voluptuous, corseted woman appears and, in a hysterical, orgasmic piece of recitative, outlines the way in which the musical form is structured.
Dizzy from her outburst, no audience could in any way be prepared for what follows. Structure as we know it goes right out the window, as the handsome performers of Spain's Companyia Carles Santos invade our senses with an hour of light-headed, decadent delirium.
Gleaming grand pianos, with the players sitting nonchalantly in place, are pulled and pushed on, off and around the stage, sometimes pursued by a rampantly predatory pianola.
Musicians, singers, actors, dancers hurtle between, sometimes wearing extravagantly flamboyant comedia dell'artestyle costumes, sometimes wearing nothing at all, the gorgeous frothy creations having been dropped insolently at their feet.
Flamenco dancing, bullfighting, copulation, attempted drowning, partying . . . it all unfolds like a joyous Mediterranean carnival, while Bach's gigantic busts take an undignified buffeting and the glory and unsuspected eroticism of his music is revealed with virtuosity and at breakneck speed.
At the centre of it all, preventing total anarchy ensuing, is Catalonian composer and director Carles Santos, at whose vision of this beautiful, crazy experience one can only gasp in wonder.