Sala: New Theatre, Oxford

The inaugural production of Oxford's new “international” company lacks direction, but Carmen Giannattasio’s Tosca makes the trip worthwhile. 

After Marios Papadopoulos' propulsive account of Brahms' Third Symphony, Nigel Kennedy joined the Oxford Philomusica to give an unpredictable and inconsistent performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto.

Handel’s Jephtha is an oratorio, rather than an opera. However, the story is one of high drama and emotion, and thus the work lends itself easily to operatic adaptation.

Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos boasts the most confusing cast list of any opera. Ariadne and Bacchus feature either as themselves or as "primadonna" and "tenor", in addition to figures from Greek mythology, we get Commedia dell'arte names like Scaramuccio and Truffaldino, there are backstage characters like the composer, the music master and the wigmaker, and a spoken part of the Major-Domo.