Lightning, it would appear, can strike twice in the Chiltern Hills. In 2022, director John Caird and conductor Laurence Cummings collaborated on a much-admired staging of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, a seminal work from 1607. Four years later, and it’s the turn of Il Ritorno d’Ulisse, another terrific slice of baroque music theatre. Like Ulysses, it took Monteverdi decades to find his way back to the genre he’d helped define during his middle period in Mantua. Inspired by the newly commercial operatic world of late-1630s Venice, he fashioned a hit show with dramatic insight and plenty of special effects to pull in the crowds.

Robert Jones has salvaged elements of his Orfeo set design, with musicians seated on verdant terraces surrounded by crumbling frescoed walls. The opulent costumes, some of them apparently repurposed as a cost-saving measure (although you’d never know), encase the Greek gods in shimmering Elizabethan robes and ruffs. The mortals, clad in whites and creams, feel as if they’ve wandered in from an Edwardian country house party. Paul Pyant’s elegant lighting surrounds it all with a golden aura. Magical moments, such as Neptune rising from the sea, or the arrival of Telemaco on Minerva’s chariot, are pulled off with an unpretentious ingenuity.

From the moment the English Concert enters the theatre, having warmed the audience up with some pre-show marching around the Wormsley Estate playing Monteverdi’s Toccata, there’s a feeling of festive inclusivity. The playing is polished, with Cummings on chamber organ and colourful contributions from lirone, harp, a pair of theorbos and a trio of sackbuts. The dramatically sluggish first half could benefit from a kick up the musical backside, but in general the pacing is assured.

The cast is led by a rugged Ed Lyon in the title role, his flexible tenor as effective when he awakes as a shipwrecked mariner on the Ithacan shore as it is when he triumphs over the oily grifters sniffing around his wife and throne room. Cecelia Hall is a deeply sympathetic Penelope, emphasising the political as well as her emotional dilemma with a refreshing touch of humour here and there.

Elsewhere, there are some deftly crafted character portraits. James Gilchrist captures the simple-hearted loyalty and pastoral philosophies of the elderly shepherd Eumete, even as his nimble voice turns intricate somersaults. Fiona Kimm is tenderly down-to-earth as Penelope’s nurse Ericlea, with Claire Lees bright as a button as Minerva. As for the suitors, they are an exceptionally preening bunch led by James Creswell’s pugnacious Antinoo and Benjamin Hulett’s strutting Anfinomo. Stuart Jackson, who, as the gourmandising Iro, can flounce with the best of them, almost wins you over with his mock-melancholy hunger aria.

All told, it whets the appetite for 2028 and a promised L’incoronazione di Poppea.