English Touring Opera's autumn season has a thesis: myth is what happens to women when men leave. The double bill pairs Elena Langer's 20-minute Ariadne — a 2002 Almeida commission, words by Glyn Maxwell — with Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. On paper, a coherent programme. In the room, two productions that reveal how much direction can make or break work this exposed. Langer's Ariadne is a soprano monologue dressed as a chamber piece, and Anna Morrissey's production earns every minute of its short runtime. The central image — Theseus disentangling himself from both Ariadne and a red thread heaped on the floor, as if he'd only just returned from the labyrinth — is the kind of stage picture that explains a myth better than scholarship. Jessica Cale's diamond-bright soprano carries the weight of the piece without strain. The four-instrument ensemble (oboe, violin, viola, cello, conducted by no one) plays in high sonorities that blur into the voice, suggesting light on water. Joseph Hornsby's lighting makes that literal. The ending — Ariadne apparently sewing the thread through her skin — is the one moment that misfires, demanding too much of Cale's physical attention at the wrong time. Then the world pivots. Rebecca Meltzer's Dido is built around a central, coherent idea: Purcell's opera was first performed by the girls of Josias Priest's school in Chelsea, so why not make the whole production feel like a school? Alex Berry's set — black rocks, huge frosted glass panels — is generic operatic myth territory, but Meltzer fills it with charcoal blazers and pleated skirts on everyone, men included, the look hovering between form room and Thom Browne. Lydia Shariff's Sorceress moves like a year-eight queen bee. Isabelle Atkinson's Belinda puts on tiny black-button-eyed sunglasses to toggle between frenemy and witch. The conceit is sharp and the staging has real movement. The problem is Dido herself. With Samantha Price's Dido established as a victim from her first entrance, the tragedy has nowhere to travel. Classical myth operates by showing a figure of real power destroyed by passion and divine caprice — the fall only matters if there is something to fall from. Here the fall is the starting position. Price sings expressively, and Alex Robinson directs the orchestra from the harpsichord with imagination, but steady tempos blunt the momentum. The drama of the 'Lament' lands less hard than it should because we were never convinced this was a queen with a realm. The pairing is revealing in ways ETO may not have intended. Langer's 20-minute Ariadne, a genuine miniature, does more emotional work per minute than the full Purcell because Morrissey trusts the myth to do its own weight-bearing. Meltzer's Dido substitutes a frame — school, social cruelty, gaslit victimhood — for the myth's gravitational engine. That engine is the collision between human passion and divine indifference. Remove it, and you have an interesting concept production of a piece with a famous ending, rather than an opera. The tour runs through November — Buxton on 24 October, then eleven further dates. For those who can catch only one half of the evening, the first thirty minutes are the reason to go.
