Dido and Aeneas ... Erwartung

The creative team surrounding director Krzysztof Warlikowski has a long history of successful collaboration that has taken them to all of Europe’s great opera houses.

At the Bayerische Staatsoper the team last staged Salome in almost the same configuration in 2019. For the DidoandAeneas ... Erwartung double bill, Małgorzata Szczęśniak is again designing the stage and costumes, as she has for all of Warlikowski's productions since 1992. For more than 20 years Felice Ross has been responsible for the lighting design for the team's opera productions. Kamil Polak, who won an Oscar in 2008 in the Animated Short Film category, designs the videos, and dancer and actor Claude Bardouil is in charge of movement direction – tried and tested as always. Dramaturge Christian Longchamp, also connected to the team by numerous projects at other theatres, is now also working for the first time in Munich.

Warlikowski is also connected with the singer now embodying both roles, Dido and the Woman, Ausrine Stundyte. They celebrated highly acclaimed success at the Salzburg Festival in 2020 with Elektra, and the singer has been a regular guest in Munich since 2015, most recently appearing as Regan in Reimann's Lear in 2021 and Jeanne in Krzysztof Penderecki's The Devils of Loudun in 2022.

At the edge of a forest, a woman named Dido lives in a house that does not belong to her. She is a refugee. Nothing is known about her except that she comes from far away. Past and present, reality and fantasy are so intermingled in her that one does not know whether the mysterious figures and evil spirits that appear at times inhabit the forest or her mind. Dido feels a mad love for a man who is also a fugitive, Aeneas. "Dearest, dearest, the morning is coming...What shall I do here alone?..In this endless life...in this dream without borders or colors...for my border was the place where you were...and all the colors of the world broke from your eyes...The light will come for all...but I alone in my night?..." (Expectation)
Director Krzysztof Warlikowski tells the story of this woman in Dido and Aeneas.... Expectation the story of this woman. He combines the baroque opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell (circa 1688/89) with the expressionist monodrama Erwartung by Arnold Schoenberg (1909), mirroring both narratives in each other in a psychologically complex way.
The female part is interpreted by the renowned soprano Ausrine Stundyte, who is once again a guest at the Bavarian State Opera. For conductor Andrew Manze, this production is his house debut.