Dido and Aeneas

A gem of Baroque music, teeming with emotion and mystery. Dido and Aeneas, Henry Purcell’s best-known work, is an intimate and melancholic opera, retelling Virgil’s story of the Queen of Carthage and the mythical Trojan hero’s ill-fated love.

A gem of Baroque music, one of the oldest still widely performed and popular operas, the first world-class English opera … These are among the attributes of Henry Purcell’s best-known work, whose genesis is not yet clear, a work that has not survived in its entirety. The opera was probably first performed in 1689 at the dance master and choreographer Josias Priest’s boarding school for young gentlewomen in Chelsea, London. Some scholars have, however, argued that Purcell wrote the piece for the English court, either for James II or, even earlier, for Charles II. Still others claim that the opera bears within a covert allegory, veiled in a mythological story, with the witches symbolising the Catholic Church, highly unpopular in the England of the time .

• Language: In English, surtitles in Czech, English

Premiere: January 15, 2026

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