THE Entente Cordiale theme to this year’s York Early Music Festival found an ideal setting on Sunday evening in two mythological Baroque operas presented by the Early Opera Company. Director and harpsichordist Christian Curnyn led consummate performances of Charpentier’s Actéon and Purcell’s Dido And Aeneas to a full house.

The company galloped incisively through the opening chorus “Allons Marchons Courons”, to introduce Ed Lyon’s dashingly free-spirited Actéon. As Diana, Sophie Junker charmed softly before reproving the hero stridently.

The opera’s highlight was Lyon’s fracturing metamorphosis recitative, followed by an instrumental Plaint. Generous conducting from Curnyn guided the players through taut harmonic twists, with cutting pedal notes of perfectly blended theorbo and cello.

All eight singers engaged from their platform behind the ensemble, particularly Hilary Summers, whose jealous Juno spat abrasively. If French pronunciation varied somewhat, it was through no lack of projection in the reverberant acoustic. With libretto to hand, the richness of the text could be fully appreciated.

Without one in Dido And Aeneas, the poetry was superseded by ominous music unfolding from brisk tempi and starkly sung fortepianos.

Junker’s avid Belinda contrasted Emilie Renard’s raw Dido, whose charged diction emphasised the queen’s restraint. Resorting to a barely sung bellow for “by all that’s good: no more”, her lament transformed from stillness to impassioned vibrato and a burning final “Remember me”.

Callum Thorpe’s grand Aeneas seemed less sincere after Lyon’s turns as a persuasive Spirit and cynical Sailor. Summers stretched vowels as a comedically hyperbolic Sorceress, oozing villainy in heavily accented rhythms.

Pins could have dropped during silences between the entreating final words, “and never part”. This company is certainly a keeper.