Star rating: ****
Extended to two hours, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas automatically solves the problem of what, in the standard version of half that length, it should be coupled with.
But in becoming a full-scale musical entity, it runs the risk of seeming theatrically somewhat less than that, especially when, as on Saturday, it is split in two by a traditionally unnecessary interval and decelerated by a performance, from Philip Pickett and his New London Consort, conspicuously slower-moving than is nowadays expected.
Yet, eked out with pauses and interesting musical accretions, this modest but perceptive staging by Jonathan Miller, celebrating the composer's 350th birthday, succeeded in gripping the attention in a way that tighter, more histrionic versions sometimes don't.
Facial expression - none of it exaggerated - replaced the verve Scottish Opera brought to the work when Charles Mackerras conducted it and Janet Baker was the emotionally supercharged queen.
In Pickett's hands, each character was an unobtrusive presence - even Julia Gooding as Dido seemed to walk right past her closing lament - and the precise tints provided by the instrumentalists at the side of the platform were part of the evening's success.
Most of the sounds, including the warble of recorders, were soft-grained, but the addition of kettledrums for the stage effects was a notable bonus, as was the roughage of a serpent in the lower register.
With a male-voice sorceress (the bass-baritone Simon Grant) at the centre of a bunch of hoodies, and an Aeneas (the sonorous Michael George) as statuesque as Wagner's Wotan, the performance - forming part of Glasgow's International Classical Season - had dramatic scope as well as some nice touches of comedy.
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