Classical review: Dido and Aeneas/ Acis and Galatea, Royal Opera House, London WC2

Royal Opera House, London WC2

It sounded like a marriage arranged in heaven - two baroque operas: Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (1689) and Handel's Acis and Galatea (1718) performed together, a collaboration between the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet (why didn't they do this more often?) under the direction of lead choreographer Wayne McGregor. It would be a celebration of two anniversaries (Purcell was born 350 years ago, Handel died 250 years ago) and the operas would consort with one another without strain, gently communing in grief as first Dido then Galatea were parted from their lovers. There was a third enticement: the opera would be performed by the splendid Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Christopher Hogwood. Altogether, it sounded auspicious and I could not have looked forward to the evening more.

Dido's is a circular musical journey: it starts and ends in sorrow. What is miraculous about Purcell is the way he combines lightness with a burden of grief; the opening rejoices yet laments at the same time. I had never seen the opera performed but have always loved its intimacy. It is easy to imagine hearing it in a sitting room - after all, it was written as a chamber piece. And it contains one of the most beautiful songs ever written: Dido's lament seems almost modern, exists in its own space and has a surprising directness with its heartbreaking words about hoping to cause "no trouble" after death - moving humility from a great queen.

It took no time to recognise that the problem for Wayne McGregor has been trying to find a way to make the opera work on the huge Covent Garden stage. His solution is to be statuesque. The emphasis is on gravity, simplicity, stark contrasts. Dido and Aeneas are monumental figures and the chorus is massed together darkly or strung out across the stage. But there is never enough action to occupy them and they seem stunned, marking time. Hildegard Bechtler's design is beautiful but austere, using stone and hard lines, softened by the importing of an olive grove. And at the end, you see the tremendous dark silhouette of Aeneas's boat, clear and absolute as Dido's fate.

Lucas Meachem sings Aeneas with a magnificence and reach that his acting lacks. Sarah Connolly's Dido is more successful, with a lovely, unforced quality. Her lament, in the arms of Belinda, who tries to staunch the blood from her queen's wrists with the hem of her dress, brought tears to my eyes. But I longed to hear her sing in a smaller space. Belinda, meanwhile, is an odd - potentially ridiculous - part. She is a chivvier, a stirrer, a quickener of the plot. But Lucy Crowe is wonderful and her vitality, lovely soprano voice and light step give the production an animation missing elsewhere. As the sorceress, Sara Fulgoni is goodish, although not yet quite a mistress of the black arts; she needs to be more frightening.

The dancing in this first half is minimal and puzzling. The dancers appear in black leotards, like swimmers gone astray. The choreography turns them into human hieroglyphs and often suggests that they are automata. I missed the point; the dance did not seem linked to the opera at all.

Handel's pastoral masque Acis and Galatea, a banquet of captivating songs, is a more ambitious experiment in mixing opera and ballet. When the curtain goes up, what you see is startling: a dance based on Lucas Cranach's 1530 masterpiece The Golden Age (though the painted backdrop is more Claude Lorrain). The stage is filled with naked sport. Nymphs and swains in tan body stockings test their limbs to see what happy new contortions they can achieve. The two stuffed deer on stage look frozen and unimpressed.

But as Galatea, Danielle de Niese, with her Heidi plaits, is a marvellously relaxed performer. She basks in her own voluptuous voice and has every reason to enjoy it. Charles Workman's Acis is superlative too, a shepherd in a shaggy jumper. I fell in love with him. Who wouldn't? He has a celestial voice and he can act. His rendition of "Love Sounds the Alarm" has attack and vim as he impatiently sharpens his shepherd's crook. His conscientious co-shepherd, Damon, who tells him not to let pleasure interfere with duty, is sung with admirable urgency by Paul Agnew. Matthew Rose's Polyphemus is an impressive (and depressive) stone-wielder of a giant but never thrills in the way his rival does.

Galatea and Acis are shadowed by astounding dancers - Lauren Cuthbertson and Edward Watson in the cast I saw. But although their dancing is immaculate, I could not rid myself of the disappointing feeling that there were parallel universes on stage - the world of opera and of ballet. It seemed as if the ballet was trapped in a bubble of its own, refusing to mix. The dancers are lightness itself, newly minted, free of care, innocent as Adam and Eve before the fall and the fig leaf. They put the singers at an unflattering disadvantage, making them seem large and clumsily human by contrast.

The different elements of the production are never integrated, even when, at the end, de Niese gamely dances with her spirit lover, principal dancer Edward Watson. How could she compete? It is as futile to expect to be moved by this ending as to hope that the stuffed animals on stage will stir.

Three to see

Chilingirian Quartet with the Hilliard Ensemble Wigmore Hall, London, Wed

Gesualdo's Responsoria in Parasceve with Haydn's Seven Last Words from the Cross

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Royal Festival Hall, London, Thu

St Matthew Passion, with outstanding Mark Padmore as the evangelist.

Endellion Quartet with Andrew Motion St George's, Bristol, Thu

Haydn's Seven Last Words with seven new "sacred conversations" from the Poet Laureate.

Contributor

Kate Kellaway

The GuardianTramp

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