William Kentridge has staged a new production of Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo for the Greek National Opera, opening the company's autumn season in Athens. The production runs from 30 October to 14 November 2026, and marks the first time in the opera company's history that it has performed Monteverdi's telling of the Orpheus myth.

Kentridge, the South African artist known for his animated films, drawings and theatrical stagings, brings his visual language to the 1607 opera, in which the musician Orpheus descends to the underworld to reclaim his wife Eurydice. A trailer for the production, titled Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. Diorama, presents Kentridge recounting the story through a diorama with dual-channel video and scenography, placing the myth's three figures — Orpheus, Eurydice and Hermes — inside a small constructed world of moving images and cut-out forms.

The Athens staging sits within a busy autumn for the artist. His exhibition Imitate the Sleep of Stones is on view at the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum in Athens until 24 January 2027, while I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine continues at BOZAR in Brussels until 7 March 2027. The pairing of a new opera staging with a museum exhibition in the same city makes Athens the centre of Kentridge's autumn programme.

Kentridge is also due to appear in conversation in San Francisco on 8 November, and his performance works The Head & the Load and Sibyl tour to Oakland and Antwerp later in the season. A conversation between Kentridge and novelist Colm Toibin about Orpheus, family and tragedy appears in the latest issue of Ursula magazine.