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Music

• newChoir: Mansfield College Chapel

  After a successful launch earlier this year, newChoir gave a promising follow-up on Sunday with an adventurous programme that contrasted sharply with their debut concert in March. From an exploration of sacred works they turned this time to secular music, shining the spotlight on folk song from the British Isles and America. read more

• The Orchestra of St John's: Ashmolean Museum

  Former Christ Church chorister and undergraduate Sir William Walton didn’t exactly score an immediate, universally admired hit with his self-styled “entertainment” Façade. The Manchester Guardian wrote of “relentless cacophony”. Critic Edward J. Dent, on the other hand, was more appreciative: “The audience was at first inclined to treat the whole thing as an absurd joke, but there is always a surprisingly serious element in Miss Sitwell’s poetry and Mr Walton’s music, which soon induced the audience to listen with breathless attention”. read more

• The Magic Flute: Longborough Festival Opera

  With this new Magic Flute, Longborough Festival Opera comes to the end of its Mozart opera cycle — next year Wagner reigns supreme, with only La bohème getting a look-in alongside no fewer than three Ring cycles. As with LFO’s preceding Mozart productions, direction is in the hands of Jenny Miller, and the conductor is Gianluca Marcianò. read more

• Out of the Blue: New Theatre, Oxford

  The 15-strong Oxford student a capella ‘boy band’ Out of the Blue enjoyed a significant boost to their popularity as a consequence of their journey to the semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent. Viewing You Tube footage of their appearance as I write has given me my first glimpse of that dire show. A trip to the New Theatre on Tuesday supplied my first sight of the lads themselves. The evening proved not only painless but great fun. read more

• The Mikado: Sunningwell Festival

  It’s not often you get to see The Mikado accompanied by the occasional splashing of ducks, or with Ko-Ko making his first appearance in a punt. But this is all part of the charm of the Sunningwell Festival — a kind of mini Henley Festival set around a village pond instead of the Thames — and on Saturday this ten-day arts jamboree came to a rousing close with Opera Anywhere’s Jubilee-themed production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most popular operetta. read more

• L'Olimpiade: Garsington Opera at Wormsley

  A slow-motion performance by the actor athletes and a cheeky burst of Vangelis’s unforgettable theme music introduce an appropriate — if amusingly irreverent — element of Chariots of Fire into Garsington Opera’s timely revival of Vivaldi’s rarely seen late work L’Olimpiade at Wormsley. read more

• Lucia di Lammermoor: Opera Holland Park

  The 2012 season of Opera Holland Park — almost a ‘home gig’ thanks to the Oxford Tube stop just down the road — is off to a splendid start with Olivia Fuchs’s unfussy new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Notable chiefly for a compelling British debut in the title role by the Russian soprano Elvira Fatykhova — a singer of pin-point accuracy and (as is needed here) notable stamina — this pleasing opener is well sung throughout the ranks, and especially by the chorus. read more

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