NO BETTER time than Easter to plead the cause of Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera. Forged in the same white fire of creative energy as Peter Grimes, Lucretia can remain problematic because of the apparent moralising of the framing Chorus. But watching this play of passion in a week of Passions certainly put things into context.

Peter Hoare’s robust tenor, and Geraldine McGreevy’s serene soprano, as Male and Female Chorus, urged us to see “through eyes which have wept with Christ’s own tears”. And, for those with ears to hear, Britten is not Christianising so much as providing an archetype of the eternal redemptive man of sorrows.

The Rape of Lucretia does work well, too, in concert performance. Steuart Bedford directed 12 crack players and a strong cast through the cinematic unfolding of Britten’s graphic scenes.

A little more play with silence would have helped in St John’s resonant acoustic. But no cunning stage lighting could improve on Britten’s evocation, in oscillating strings and harp, of the clinging, menacing heat of a summer night. No backdrop is more powerful than his score, and the listener’s imagination, in conjuring up horse and rider crossing the Tiber as Tarquinius approached Lucretia’s dwelling.

Catherine Wyn-Rogers, as Lucretia, filled her burnished contralto with enough latent passion and yearning to summon up Tarquinius as the “tiger” in her dreams. Her benumbed murmuring in the final scene sealed a thought-provoking performance.

The tiger was Thomas Allen, living through every second of his role, from its noble legato of longing to its harsh violence. Bass Neal Davies as Lucretia’s husband Collatinus fused pity and fear. And the innocent radiance of the Swedish soprano Malin Christensson’s Lucia illuminated the dark experience of Anne Marie Owens’s Bianca.