Berlioz’ Les Troyens is a tale of two cities and two women. One, Troy, is destroyed at the end of a ten-year siege; the other, Carthage, has been built from nothing in seven years. One woman can see disaster coming and urges her husband to flee, lest he be killed in the carnage – she is ignored. The other is oblivious to the obvious until well after it has happened. Both women kill themselves rather than live with the outcome. Yet Cassandre, the clear-sighted one, is a by-word for a whiney pessimist, whereas  Didon is a romantic, tragic, heroine. And so it goes.

It is not the most action-heavy opera – many scenes are either state occasions or soliloquies and, in Yannis Kokkos’ spare staging for the Mariinsky Theatre, there is a lot of  huge, uncluttered stage, the space visually doubled by a mirror backcloth. This works very well when the back half of the stage splits to form a processional way we can only see in the mirror. Stylised model ships hanging against a blue background represent the Trojan fleet.

Kokkos also eschews staging the entr'acte hunt. Instead, we see a forest, through which Enée strolls. He sees a white horse – like the one brought into Troy – and is joined by Dido in red, trailing metres of fabric. But always the sea, at the front of the stage, ebbing and flowing, in Eric Duranteau’s video installation.

The musical forces marshalled by conductor Valery Gergiev are considerable. Mlada Khudoley is an intelligent Cassandre, her voice registering the exasperation and frustration she clearly feels. Her exhortation to the Trojan women to join her in a mass suicide is fervent; nevertheless, the younger women choose life.

Stately Ekaterina Semenchuk invests Didon with dignity. Not for her the histrionics of teenage infatuation – until Enée secretly sails away. Her farewell is, therefore, the more intense. As Anna, Ekaterina Krapivina’s rich contralto sounds impish, egging on her sister Didon to fall for Enée – it is seven years since the Queen’s husband was killed, after all. The advice of Narbal, a convincing Yury Vorobiev, is ignored.

Sergey Semishkur’s Enée is, like Didon, a grown-up, for whom the time in Carthage is an interlude in a longer journey. His conscience – or the ghosts of King Priam and Hector – urge him on. Even in his love duet with Didon, his ship is in a pool of light, attracting his attention and ours.

As Enée’s son Ascagne, Lydumila Dudinova is bright and sweet, happy as a lark in the safety of Carthage, in contrast to Astyanax (Innokenty Tkachenko) and his mother Andromache, whose fate Enée recounts to Didon. Yevgeny Akhmedov sings the sailor Hylas’ nostalgic lyric with a pure sound.

The chorus mostly works well, but the offstage singing is indistinct, overpowered by the orchestra. In a fairly static production – all those state occasions - lighter relief is provided by Putinesque, bare-chested wrestlers, whose moves are rendered more visible by the backcloth mirror, and a couple of joshing Trojans who are in no hurry to leave the fleshpots of Carthage .