Poetry, Ezra Pound tells us, is news that stays news—a maxim we might extend to other arts as well. Chances are you missed the report of a collision involving a passenger bus and a truck loaded with sulfuric acid somewhere in the southern Congo, in 2019, but for the locals the consequences were profound. To the Swiss theater director and impresario Milo Rau and the Catalan composer Hèctor Parra, the narrative seemed the stuff of an unusual contemporary opera. Coproduced with the Grand Théâtre de Genève, in Geneva, where it recently premiered, their creation now forms the centerpiece of Tangente St. Pölten, a festival dedicated to contemporary culture that takes place a half hour’s train ride from central Vienna. —Matthew Gurewitsch