A Story: Dido and Aeneas

Krymov Lab presents Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas as an “object-based opera” performed by a company of stage designers led by Vera Martynova.

All graduating students of GITIS, the Moscow Theater Academy, the young artists not only devised, conceived, imagined, and created every element on stage but they are also performers and singers.

Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas found its inspiration in the Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid and tells the tragic love story of Dido, Queen of Carthage and the Trojan hero Aeneas. Its first known performance was at Josias Priest's girls' school in London in 1688, was created for an intimate space, and required only a few instruments. As a consequence, this reimagining of Dido and Aeneas recreates the original intimacy by communicating with the audience in a very personal and direct way: living stage images are constructed and deconstructed ceaselessly in front of our eyes in a montage of real-time sound, technology and performance coming together in song.