The Trojans at Carthage/ENO, The Coliseum, London<br></br>Jessye Norman/ Mark Markham, Royal Festival Hall, London<br></br>Angelika Kirchschlager/ Venice Baroque Orchestra, Barbican Hall, London

Sealed with a single hungry kiss

Were there a theme this week, it would have to be sensuality: how to portray it, and how to experience it on stage so nakedly and so ecstatically that the listener can only blush with pleasure. Now, cast your eyes over the list of subjects on the left. Was the above-mentioned experience part of Jessye Norman's performance of Beethoven, Mahler, Danielpour and Duparc songs? Or could it have been Angelika Kirchschlager's recital of Bach arias? I'll leave you to speculate and cut to the portrayal of sensuality instead; the crucial element of the second part of Richard Jones's production of The Trojans for English National Opera.

If The Capture of Troy – designed by Stewart Laing, whose late 20th-century costumes are retained throughout both parts of the opera – was a supermarket sweep through the CNN archives, John Macfarlane's set for The Trojans at Carthage suggests a minimalist Versailles. To be sure, Susan Parry's Dido is more Golda Meir than Marie Antoinette at the start. But the merest glance at Aeneas (John Daszak) has Dido casting off her shirtdress-and-chignon severity for the kind of off-the-shoulder floaty number that Cherie Blair might wear for an informal photo-op in Chiantishire, and, literally, letting her hair down. (A metaphor for female sexual abandon that, along with the removal of spectacles, should be illegal.)

Before I'm accused of overstating the sartorial, this hackneyed shift in costume and coiffure signifies Dido's progress from public to private. In much the same vein, following an arrestingly monochrome Royal Hunt and Storm, the sparse terracotta palace where Dido maps the new Carthage is exchanged for a bijou adobe retreat decked with giant reptiles and insects. Not very promising, you might think. But Dido's creepy-crawly Petit Trianon – the mirror of Cassandra's slaughter house in size and position – is both where Jones's production begins to achieve an over-all balance of subjects and where the Queen of Carthage is, finally, allowed to touch her lover.

For the attenuated magic of this single, sudden, hungry kiss – and the magic of the ensuing duet between these two touchingly candid singers – I'll forgive any amount of dancers and prancers and missiles and merkins. That Jones holds the distance between Parry and Daszak for so very long only intensifies their consummation. The state offices, the formality of diplomacy and the crowds of Carthaginians effectively melt as the lovers are framed in stars. (Full credit to Wolfgang Göbbel's gorgeous lighting.) What a shame about the orchestra! Though ENO's woodwind go from strength to strength, the voluptuous, intelligent sensuality of Berlioz's score is again stifled by Paul Daniel's rigid reading and tired upper strings.

How The Trojans will work when both parts are brought together, I cannot tell. My hope is that the contrast between politic and erotic will make sense when seen as a whole. For those curious to see this part, Christopher Saunders's Hylas offers a moment of exquisite beauty, Victoria Simmonds is an excellent Ascanius, and understudy Anne Marie Gibbons made a touching first night Anna. I remain unconvinced by the employment of separate designers for Troy and Carthage but, cautiously, would recommend seeing Part Two for yourself before next year's full production.

So to the experience of sensuality, which, as Jessye Norman's recital demonstrated, cannot be faked or wrested from an inattentive, bronchitic audience, and, as Angelika Kirchschlager's recital proved, is best enjoyed when the singer clearly doesn't give a damn about anything except that full-body, first-love glow that occurs when repertoire and voice just click and fly.

Drawing a comparison between a truly great artist whose voice is no longer equal to her interpretive imagination and an artist whose growing interpretive and vocal powers are just on the cusp of greatness may seem cruel. But the distinction between these two has more to do with issues of ego than vocal elasticity. Even before the unprecedentedly elaborate orchestra of coughers and wheezers had started up in the Festival Hall, Norman was clearly irritated by their failure to applaud exactly where indicated – though Beethoven's Gellert Lieder, however eloquently argued, are surely more appropriate to a smaller venue. Richard Danielpour's lazily flattering Spirits in the Well proved wasteful of the declamatory talents and emotional range of Norman and its lyricist Toni Morrison and was a sorry contrast to Judith Weir's superbly crafted woman.life.song. A magisterial finger to the lips, commanding the coughers to shush, was ignored, likewise the announcement from the management. And for all the lavish sculpting of lines in Duparc's Chanson Triste this event rapidly became a grand powergame of glares and sighs and stamps rather than a recital.

One has to question why she does it? Norman could fill the Wigmore Hall for a week, have an audience happy to hold their breath through the most abstruse repertoire, and combine her performances with a series of masterclasses. (What Norman doesn't know about acting and gesture and line and colour probably isn't worth knowing.) But my suspicion is she won't for much longer. If she's disappointed in us, so too will we grow disappointed in her.

Of Andrea Marcon's Venice Baroque Orchestra there's not much to say. Marcon's harpsichord playing was excellent, as was that of his violone, bassoon, and cello. Some noodle-crazy, link-loving, semi-Segovian archlute playing aside, the rest of his group is efficient enough, though Vivaldi with characterless violins just doesn't cut the carpaccio. Of their soloist, Ms Kirchschlager, all I can say is that hers was one of the most extraordinary recitals I've seen; so absolute and unselfconscious was her connection to Schlummert ein, Vergnügte Ruh, and even the impossibly low Widerstehe doch der Sünde. She looks like Nicole Kidman, she moves like Sarah Vaughan, she has the most open, generous vowels, the most perfect vibrato and diction, and sings for love and pleasure not for power. Who could ask for anything more? Not me.

a.picard@independent.co.uk

'The Trojans at Carthage': Coliseum, London WC2 (020 7632 8300) to 7 June