Opera / Dido & Aeneas, Opera Australia. At Sydney Opera House until March 29. Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

Widely regarded as the one of the earliest known English operas, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas focuses on the love of Dido, the Queen of Carthage, for the Trojan hero, Aeneas, and her despair when he abandons her.

For his extraordinary production, first staged by Opera Queensland in 2024, director and stage designer Yaron Lifschitz has ditched historical references in favour of a stunning abstract, highly visual presentation in which spectacular acrobatics replace the more usual dance sequences inherent in baroque opera.

As it entered the theatre, the audience was met by text projected across a black screen posing a series existential questions and comments, among them “Why is it so hard to love the world?”, “The invention of the ship is also the invention of the shipwreck”, “Whoever goes in search of humans will find acrobats”, “Whatever I hide by my language my body utters”.

The effect of the attention-focusing device was disrupted by the “welcome to country” ceremony followed by the orchestra tuning up.

However, as it settled into the opera, the prologue offered the first of a succession of arresting sequences starting with the sight of an embracing couple on a tightly lit pedestal. As they slowly moved the curtain rose to reveal a row of candles flickering across the front of the stage and a silhouetted figure traversing a tight rope as Anna Dowsley, costumed as Dido, in a black sequined gown and orange wig, began the first of her arias.

Uninterrupted by an interval, the opera progressed through a mesmerising series of brilliantly lit (Matthew Marshall), strikingly staged sequences. Although sung in English, on-stage surtitles kept the audience abreast of the artistic, though largely unintelligible, lyrics, as well as the locales in which the action was taking place.

The Opera Australia Chorus, Circa acrobats and supporting characters, Belinda (Jane Ede), Second Lady (Sian Sharpe), First Witch (Angela Hogan), Second Witch (Keara Donohoe), Spirit Mercury (Cathy-Di Zhang) and Sailor (Gregory Brown) were all costumed by Libby McDonald in similar elegant black unisex costumes, although the acrobats sometimes discarded the trousers to enable their more difficult manoeuvres.

Only Dido (Anna Dowsley in sequins) and Aeneas (Nicholas Jones in a black dinner suit) were distinguished from the others.

This device allowed Lifschitz to keep them in focus while the rest of the cast participated in the tightly choreographed staging in which it was often difficult to separate who were chorus and who were acrobats in scenes for which both were much more integrated by Lifschitz than even his Orpheus and Eurydice seen in the Opera House last year.

This freed the audience to concentrate on the beauty of the singing and orchestral playing while feasting their eyes on the succession of stunning, constantly changing, stage images.

Dowsley and Jones were masterful casting as Dido and Aeneas. Both in glorious voice, completely believable as the thwarted lovers and unfazed by the complicated staging into which both were more integrated than would normally be expected for such difficult singing roles.

For Dowsley this involved a stunning transformation in which she emerges from her sequined gown, stripping away her orange wig to emerge as a bald Sorceress, and for Jones, having to walk over the bodies of the acrobats while singing an aria.

Conducted for this performance by Chad Kelly, the Opera Australia Orchestra and chorus paid homage to Purcell’s music with exemplary performances that ended with the chorus creating a stereophonic sound by singing from the balconies inside the auditorium for a stunning finale.

The rapturous response from the audience was a fitting indication of the success of a daring concept that honoured a work which has survived centuries.