But for the blandishments of librettist Arrigo Boito, Aida would have been Verdi’s last opera. Both Verdi and generations of his devotees should owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Boito for his intervention, which resulted in the musical delights of Otello and Falstaff. Had Verdi been allowed his own way it is Aida that would have provided his musical epitaph, and on Friday night it was with this work that Ellen Kent Opera bade their final farewell to Oxford after 15 years of touring productions.

Following the (mis)fortunes of Princess Aida, the opera sees its heroine captured and taken from her native Ethiopia to the Egyptian court where she is enslaved to Amneris, the King’s daughter. Political and amorous machinations ensue, but culminate in one of the most brutal (not to say breathless) operatic climaxes, as Aida and her lover are convicted of treason and buried alive.

There’s no shortage of drama here, no shortage of beautiful girls, bold heroes and baying crowds, but what is extraordinarily and criminally lacking in Aida is good tunes – all its elephants and armies merely the dramatic curtain behind which the Great And Powerful Oz is pulling levers, desperately trying to conjure a melody.

Ellen Kent productions are the Marmite of opera, and this Aida will have been no exception in polarising its audience. Musically things were a little rough around the edges, with some jarringly serious tuning issues in the lower strings and woodwind, and a fundamental misunderstanding in the orchestra as to the role and volume appropriate to accompaniment. Irakli Grigali however provided characteristically strong singing (if occasionally a little tight) as hero Radames, and was matched by the emphatic mezzo of Zarui Vardanean (Amneris) and pleasingly matter-of-fact bass of Igor Sviridov (King of Egypt).

Visually striking, with meticulously choreographed crowd scenes providing colourful focal points, the production did succeed in capturing both the scale and atmosphere of this most sprawlingly and consciously exotic of works. As ever with Ellen Kent Opera, the total impact is somehow more than the sum of the constituent parts, a theatrical sleight of hand as fundamental as it is hard to achieve.