If one accepts the aptness of the old adage ‘one picture is worth a thousand words’, the range of pictorial delights offered by Barrie Kosky’s production of Handel’s oratorio Saul (1739) would test my editor’s word limit – generous though they always are.

The stage teems with vivid tableaux: one moment, vivid, swirling crowds of chorus and soloists; the next, stark, austere images of isolated characters in a deserted, Lear-like or Beckettian landscape; the next, exuberant juxtapositions of quasi-Hollywood dance numbers choreographed for a wonderful sextet of dancers and an astonishingly well-drilled large chorus. And it all contributes to an unforgettable evening of music, and musical theatre, the like of which – apart from Robyn Archer’s two festivals-- has rarely been seen in Adelaide since, well, Kosky’s own festival of 1996.