Dido and Aeneas Review – Close your eyes and this was a good job | Opera

WI know that Aeneas is going. We know before he arrives, before he declares his love to Dido, and of course before the Witch and her magical acolytes find out about it. But when your opera house is a great hall under the Cutty Sark, and a 200ft bronze sculpture towers over your head, it’s impossible to forget the tragedy that Purcell’s play has preserved.

So you have to wonder why Andrew Staples, the semi-staging director of the Monteverdi Choir, felt the need to work so hard? Space is the game. You can try to ignore it (there is nothing to do when the museum’s archive of old pictures overlooks the court of honor: Florence Nightingale rubbing the shoulders of Disraeli’s painted wood, Sir Lancelot and the buxom selections), but you can’t fight it; you can’t win.

Undeterred, Staples gave us a “custom”. The trumpets sounded and the drums played and sang and chanted forlornly, white faces, torn and stained in their dark madness – refugees from Tim Burton’s legend. Musicians who arrived at Carthage via Croydon on Saturday night had one scare from an open fire. Thank goodness Purcell turns Virgil’s pyre into poison.

Close your eyes, though, this was a rich story. Conductor Jonathan Sells climbed every step of the way, directing the proceedings, the English Baroque Soloists a multi-faceted group, relaxed in celebration, restrained elsewhere. Best of all were the unaccompanied choral moments – “And the wings are falling”, or two mournful phrases linked together – where the movement and time merged, the words joined in their rhythms, capturing the musical ideas in the most vivid way.

The natural sound of the place is matched by the big sound designed to create an interesting central drama. German-Egyptian mezzo Karima el Demerdasch (a must-see) was a loud-mouthed Dido, her suicidal queen still coming. Johanna Wallroth’s beautiful, ecstatically decorated Belinda and Bethany Horak-Hallett’s dazzling Sorceress provided the musical accompaniment we struggle with, making us sick and coming back for more. And how wonderful to have the baritonal Aeneas in Hubert Zapiór – the worthy lover and lover of Demerdasch, the hero who must be killed.

Next month the show travels to Norway for the Bergen festival. When I leave her water anchor, I suspect she will pick up a few interesting points.