‘Dido and Aeneas’ at the Bordeaux Opera House

Opéra / bordeaux

17 - 19 September

Discover this legendary play in Bordeaux in September 2026.

A legendary opera

A masterpiece of English Baroque opera, *Dido and Aeneas* tells the story of passion pitted against duty. Dido, Queen of Carthage, falls in love with Aeneas, a Trojan prince on the run who finds refuge in her palace. The court approves of this love and, through it, this alliance. But witches and spirits urge Aeneas to abandon Dido, set sail once more and found Rome, leaving the Queen to die of a broken heart. With an exclusively female vocal cast, this production is conceived as a return to the origins of the opera, which Purcell had originally created for a girls’ boarding school. By adding extracts from William Shakespeare’s *The Tempest* and *Richard III* to Virgil’s texts, the ensemble Les Surprises and Pierre Lebon present a production inspired by the great London theatrical tradition of the ‘masques’. In this extravagant and whirling spirit, the performers on stage take on every role: singers, actresses and dancers. A total spectacle in which the sea, the central character, becomes a shifting theatre within which human emotions struggle in a manner that is both grotesque and magnificent.