Based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s once-banned satire on the New Soviet Man, Alexander Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart tells of a stray mongrel that becomes human after an experimental organ transplant. But, as the Professor soon discovers to his cost, a beast is still a beast, even if it looks like a man.

Hailed by Stephen Daldry as “one of the dozen or so most important theatre directors working anywhere in the world”, Simon McBurney, Artistic Director of Complicite, makes his operatic debut with the premiere of A Dog’s Heart, a new work proudly following in the absurdist tradition of Shostakovich’s The Nose and Schnittke’s Life With An Idiot, both former English National Opera successes.

For this exciting new co-production of A Dog’s Heart with De Nederlandse Opera in collaboration with Complicite, English National Opera welcomes back two of the team behind Anthony Minghella’s Laurence Olivier Award-winning Madam Butterfly: set designer Michael Levine and master puppeteers Blind Summit Theatre, which created the eerily human puppet of Butterfly’s child and in A Dog’s Heart bring Sharik the dog to life.

A Dog’s Heart is suitable for theatregoers aged 14 and older.

Learn more about London operas within the West End.