Cantos y Tumbaos is a groundbreaking new opera by composer Reinaldo Moya and librettist Adalber Salas Hernández that reimagines Dante’s Inferno within the walls of El Helicoide, a modernist architectural marvel in Caracas transformed into a notorious political prison. Descending through the five circles of El Helicoide, she is guided by the ghost of Francisco de Miranda, a father of Venezuelan independence, condemned to wander the wreckage of his own unrealized vision. Together they move through the circles of corruption, demagoguery, and violence. In the process, the characters must reckon with a nation's soul and centuries of broken promises, as they try to understand where it all went wrong. Along the way, the women Miranda's history forgot, Teresa de la Parra and María Lionza, arrive to show Florentina how to persevere.