The days of music-stand histrionics are fading fast. Opera in concert performance is now becoming directors’ opera — in the best sense of the word. Awkward semi-stagings are out too: singers, freed from scores, props and costumes, are meeting the music head-on.

This concert performance of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, presented by soloists from Aldeburgh’s Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, was directed on a tiny platform by the Cheek by Jowl-trained Edward Dick. His close-focus psychosexual reading of the opera was played out in subtle but minutely detailed body language, in which even the movement of a hand, or the tilt of a head, seemed closely attuned to Britten’s score.

With David Parry playing the blazing piano part and conducting with an energy that drove the 12 young players of the Britten-Pears Orchestra to the limits of their powers, even the moments of literary archness in Ronald Duncan’s libretto faded into mere period irritation. The Male and Female Chorus found a fine and moving balance between helpless impotence and yearning empathy for the fate of Lucretia. James Geer’s words leapt from his clear tenor — and scented out the sibilance of lust as they were driven to declamation.

The soprano of Robyn Driedger-Klassen, one of six North Americans in this cast of eight, was outstanding in its impassioned embodiment of the drama. The simple symmetry of Dick’s identical line-up of the three men and three women in their introductory scenes emphasised the harsh gender polarity of the opera. And, within it, a fierce individuality: the poisoned inner torment of Benedict Nelson’s superbly sung Tarquinius, the manipulative rage of Stephen Mumbert’s Junius, the poise and inner focus of Allen Boxer’s Collatinus.

Blythe Guissert fused dignity and sensuality in her Lucretia, with bright vocal characterisations from Jillian Yemen as Bianca and Eve-Lyn de la Haye as Lucia.

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