28 June-19 July 2006. Conducted by Christopher Hogwood, directed by Wayne McGregor, with Sarah Connolly, Brandon Jovanovich and Marie Arnet. This production is described as an opera/ballet, with stage direction by dancer and choreographer Wayne McGregor (founder of the Random Dance Company). The original (long-lost) prologue has been substituted by choreographies set to music by Purcell.

Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell will close the winter season at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara (16 June-17 June) and at La Scala in Milan (28 June-19 July). The former is the Italian premier of a production created by the choreographer Sasha Waltz and performed in Berlin last year. A blend of opera and dance, the production fluctuates between choreographic elements in the style of Pina Bausch and baroque recitations. The opening scene of the opera is widely acclaimed: an enormous transparent bath full of water in which the dancers demonstrate skilful swimming moves, as if searching for survivors in the submerged city of Carthage. Dido and Aeneas at La Scala will also be animated by the spirit of dance with choreography by Wayne McGregor. In 1992 McGregor founded the Random Dance Company and is the inventor of a form of dance that unites the language of choreography with that of new media technology: animation, digital film and 3D architecture. McGregor has choreographed the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Woman in White.