An Anatomy of Melancholy

The beauty and bitterness of John Dowland’s music finds an echo in the poetic language of Robert Burton’s 17th-century treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy, which in turn inspired director Netia Jones. Produced and premiered by Barbican London, in this intimate theatrical meditation on the consolations of sorrow, Netia Jones weaves together the tender sadness of Dowland’s music with haunting visuals and the writings of Burton, Freud and contemporary experts on human emotion. With Iestyn Davies’s crystalline voice and contemporary lutenist Sergio Bucheli together the two unrivalled modern interpreters of Dowland are at the glowing heart of this new theatrical creation, performed in the round.

'Visionary Director' (British Theatre Guide) and 'leading video pioneer' (The Times), Netia Jones is an award-winning Director, Designer and Video Artist, working internationally in opera, theatre, concerts and immersive installation projects.

The inspiration for this work, Robert Burton's labyrinthine, beguiling, playful masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy is his attempt to 'anatomize and cut up' every aspect of the condition of melancholy, from which he had suffered throughout his life. Ranging over beauty, digestion, the planets, alcohol, goblins, kissing, poetry and the restorative power of books, among many other things, this text has fascinated figures from Samuel Johnson to Jorge Luis Borges since the seventeenth century, and remains an incomparable examination of the human condition in all its flawed, endless variety.

International touring of An Anatomy of Melancholy is currently in development for 2025/2026 and beyond.