If you venture down to the lower ground floor of the Ashmolean this summer, you will come across a series of bronze sculptures of abstract wrestling forms, straining static figures, and delicately poised models. The Olympic Games, the impetus behind so many cultural commissions and projects this year, has inspired this latest temporary exhibition at the Ashmolean.

30 artists have created a series of bronze sculptures which depict Olympic and Paralympic sports, ranging from the self evident wrestling, to the more unusual Paralympic sprinting for the partially sighted.

The artistic responses to this theme are various and individual. Most experiment with exciting ways of depicting movement, and the interest is located in the comparison of techniques. Whilst ‘Kayaking’ is depicted by a roughly modelled kayak powering down a crescentic, plunging wave, ‘Hockey’ is an exciting quasi-cubist depiction. The latter sculpture is an amorphous depiction of a figure going through the motions of hitting a hockey ball with a stick which is depicted as a textured, curved sweep of movement. It is reminiscent of Picasso’s ‘Nude descending a Staircase’ and the photographic explorations of Edward Muybridge all at once.

One of the most prominently displayed sculptures is by our favourite Oxford artist, John Buckley, whose bronze sculpture of a paralympic runner is simple, elegant,and beautiful.

In fact, this was the most prominently displayed piece in the exhibition because the others were practically lost amid the permanent exhibits in the Ashmolean’s Human Image gallery. It was odd, to say the least, to walk into a gallery space so oddly presented. The ancient death masks, fragments, and sculptures certainly dominated the space and besides them the Sport as Art exhibits were practically lost. Whilst the art was definitely admirable, the curation was disappointing.

Each of the sculptures has been cast in bronze at Pangolian Editions, the leading European foundry, in editions of 25 and on display they are technically brilliant.

The quality of patination is astounding, especially in its diversity. The composition is daring, the heavy bronze figures sometimes hanging precariously over empty space, yet the quality of the construction is such that the sculptures appear effortlessly supported.

This impression is emphasized by the juxtaposition of the exhibition pieces with the static, vertical classical sculptures that surround it. The dynamism of the contemporary equivalents set off against these ancient greats.

Visit the exhibition. It’s a small display but a satisfying one, and well worth a look.

Matthew Crow’s second novel, My Dearest Jonah, is placed firmly within the tradition of epistolary writing. The reader is presented with an exchange of letters between Jonah, a reformed murderer, and Verity, a stripper. Both characters survive along the periphery of society, with meaningless jobs providing the only impetus to continue living.

Introduced via a pen-pal scheme, the two protagonists have never met and yet appear to share a platonic love that transcends the relationships that they develop in their own separate worlds. Indeed, as Crow tells me during our interview, ‘The two characters live essentially for and because of one another’.

By placing the action of the novel in America – unlike Crow’s first novel, Ashes, which is set in northeast England – Crow allows his characters to feel the force of separation, adrift within the wilderness of such a vast country: ‘I chose America because of the space it afforded. The idea was that both characters were lost in just about every way imaginable, and in all honesty I just couldn’t imagine two characters being that separated in England, as it seems you can get anywhere in under three hours’.

As Jonah and Verity begin to ingratiate themselves into the societies that they have adopted, their interactions with reality – as opposed to the pen and paper fiction they have created for themselves – begin to destabilise their lives. Verity’s friendship with Eve, the most sympathetic character in the novel and the most finely wrought, descends into a fight for survival when the mysterious J collides with their happy, albeit chaotic, existence. Equally, the return of Jonah’s past and his inability to shake off the sinister machinations of Michael, turn his own life on its head.

Bubbling beneath the surface are questions of religion, which Crow readily acknowledges: ‘I was thinking a lot about religion when I wrote the novel, particularly the Bible, in that like Verity and Jonah’s setup, millions of people’s lives are still being run on a piece of text’. The unquestioned reality of the protagonists’ letters is exposed as problematic in the final dénouement of the novel.

There are flashes of brilliance in My Dearest Jonah when Crow loses himself and allows the true voice of his characters to speak through. Though these moments are few – a concern for a novel attempting to capture the voice of such idiosyncratic characters – there is a sense of maturation in Crow’s style that is laudable.

When we hear the voice of Verity – an appropriately chosen name for a character who treads the threshold between truth and deception so freely – and not the author, the novel find its way into the imagination. It is no doubt difficult for a writer as eloquent as Crow to pare down his language to suit his characters; however, such an exercise would have allowed us to hear beyond Crow’s own distinctly English voice. A sensitively used American idiom, devoid of cliché, and an effort to differentiate the narrative voices of his two protagonists would have elevated the work and vindicated his choice of setting.

The current students of Wadham College like to think of themselves as being the most radical and sexually liberated kids in town, but their collegiate predecessor, John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, would have put them to shame with his bawdy behaviour.

The infamous Rochester once attended Wadham College as a fresh faced undergraduate. A close friend of Charles II, Rochester was the author of many satirical and controversial poems. In his ‘Satyr on King Charles II’ he called the King ‘The proudest, peremptoriest prick alive’ resulting his immediate dismissal from court.

Rochester came to Wadham in 1659, at the grand old age of twelve, where he was supposedly ‘corrupted’. He acquired an M.A. at fourteen, helped by the fact that it was awarded by his uncle, the Earl of Clarendon and Chancellor of the University. At twenty, he married Northern beauty Elizabeth Malet, who had two years earlier been victim of his attempted abduction. Rochester hijacked her carriage late at night and tossed her into a coach. Her father, being less than pleased, kindly placed the Earl in the Tower of London.

Rochester led a scandalous life at court filled with debauchery, drunkenness and deviancy. Another Elizabeth in his life, mistress Elizabeth Barry, was a theatrical protégé who became the most successful actress of the Restoration period. Rochester became the source of inspiration for many playwrights, such as Aphra Behn, who based her protagonist in The Rover on him. Horace Walpole describes him as ‘a man whom the muses were fond to inspire but ashamed to avow’.

The crux of his career came in 1676. A midnight brawl with the guards got out of hand when the Earl’s companion was killed with fear causing Rochester to flee the crime scene. Subsequently he led a life in the shadows, taking on the personality of quack doctor ‘Doctor Bendo’. Using this pseudonym, Rochester ‘treated’ infertility amongst women, becoming effectively a backstairs sperm donor. ‘Mrs Bendo’ allowed for Rochester to enter the chambers of young women without qualms. It might not surprise readers to hear that Rochester died at 33 from syphilis, gonorrhoea and alcohol abuse.

His most famous play is Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery – a culturally pre-emptive title given Wadham’s indeterminate sexual preferences. Its literary offspring proved too depraved for contemporary audiences and were removed from the public domain. His appeal remains, with a recent copy of the play recently sold for £45,600. The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp and ex-Wadhamite Rosamund Pike, was based on his life.

Rochester is the quintessential Wadham alumnus, marrying the dichotomous ‘ladhamite’/ ‘sodomite’. Current students, having gazed over his eventful life might find themselves rather innocent by comparison.

The word ‘Opera’ brings with it a whiff of belle époque extravagance, and more than a little Andrew Lloyd Webber: women in fur coats, gentlemen in top hats, Edith Wharton novels, or an affectation of class aspirations à la Woody Allen’s Match Point, which features Caruso in Donizetti’s mournful ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ as a leitmotif.

When I call Ellen Kent, the impresario who’s brought large-scale operatic productions to an estimated 3 million people, she admits to being wrapped in a towel, preparing for an ‘army of guests’ at her 15-acre country estate.

Previously an actress and dancer, Kent’s entry into the world of opera (and later ballet) happened almost entirely by chance. When her then-husband went to Europe to report on European children’s theatre for the Arts Council, what he saw there convinced the couple to start a tour of said children travelling all around Britain, supported by the patronage of the great and good, including the likes of Judi Dench. Following the Eurotunnel’s opening in 1991, more and more opportunities for cross-cultural exchange presented themselves, and the pair became further involved with international productions.

When the Rochester (later Medway) City Council asked Kent to contribute ‘something foreign’ to the summer festival at Rochester Castle, Kent decided to throw over the French play she was currently producing – consisting of 7 French actors and 50 goldfish – for something more adventurous. She volunteered an opera production without much forethought. Kent’s research led her to the Romanian National Opera. She went to the current President (the dictator Ceausescu) and asked for an aeroplane. She got it. Ceausescu’s plane brought the whole company – all 200 of them – over in July of 1992 to stage Verdi’s Nabucco on the small stage at Rochester Castle.

Although she didn’t know much about opera, Kent was undaunted by the challenge, ‘I can do anything,’ she thought, ‘I’m a producer’. Though Kent admits she was never ‘super-attracted’ to opera during her youth, her mother, a descendent of the British Raj, was ‘the opera drama queen of Bombay’. Born and raised in India, Kent was transplanted to the small Andalusian farm to which her parents retired. After attending boarding school in Norfolk she later read Classics at the University of Durham. Kent attributes her creative thought process (‘the way my brain works’) to her being ‘a little bit of a maverick’. Dyslexic as a child, Kent didn’t read or write until she was nine and then ‘read and wrote everything’. She trained as an opera singer herself for two years (she has ‘quite a good’ mezzo-soprano with a large range) but is glad she didn’t pursue opera as a career – ‘it’s a very incestuous little world’.

Our conversation is interrupted by a sudden call to a person I can’t see – ‘Don’t shoot my pheasant!’ Apparently, her pet pheasant is off-limits to the hunter she calls to, laughing. Everything else on her estate is game.

Though Kent is now famous for her Eastern European companies, she insists that she was not specifically attracted to Eastern European theatre. She needed a big company at minimal costs, and Romania was where her research led. The political timing was right, Kent says, and everything culminated – accidentally – in great success. ‘I don’t have a master plan,’ she says, ‘I just do it.’

Her productions range between a cast of 70 to 200 people. ‘I don’t do small,’ Kent insists, ‘I do large.’ Nevertheless, the single-set Madama Butterfly, which comes to Oxford’s New Theatre this May, is ‘easy’ to put on. La Traviata, which also comes to Oxford next month, is ‘more of a challenge. I love a challenge.’ It’s hard to scale down, she admits, when beginning with Nabucco and a cast of 200.

Kent’s latest design challenge was an amphitheatre. Her history in Classics fed her interest in Greek and Roman theatre, which led to her ambition to build a miniature Colosseum. The travelling amphitheatre, constructed in 2008 on big wheels with three tiers and columns, is designed as a continuous set against which the operas play. Carmen, Aïda, and Turandot were all performed in the amphitheatre, and the set was changed by swapping statues for each production: Aïda’s Egyptian statues were exchanged for Turandot’s terracotta army. ‘It cost a fortune,’ says Kent, ‘but it looked great.’

One gets the feeling that this is the MO upon which Kent operates. Money is of the utmost importance – and spending is extravagant (thousands of pounds were reputedly spent on the gowns worn in La Traviata) – but the visual effect is priority. And the expenditure is worth it; stage managers report continuous standing ovations. ‘The audience responds to what I do,’ Kent says, and I can almost hear a shrug.

Kent’s website mentions her desire to make opera and ballet less elitist and more approachable, but she says she doesn’t have a programme for this transformation. ‘I didn’t set out to do it,’ she says, ‘I’m not here to educate.’ Her goal is to put on quality shows, and quality entertainment. Her ‘method’, if one can use the term, is her ‘dramatic perspective’. After all, Kent is ‘a drama – not an opera – lady’.

Her productions testify to her tastes and, indeed, she calls herself a ‘Verdi woman’. When I ask why she responds with great enthusiasm, ‘Well, he’s just fantastic. Dramatic music to die for. Aïda is some of the best music ever written.’

Ellen Kent productions emphasize spectacle, and her version of opera seems entirely without sentiment. Music, dance, drama, opera are all just forms, she says, insisting that opera ‘was not done to be precious.’ Kent lists the greats – Verdi, Puccini, and Bizet – as composers who created opera ‘for the masses’. In the same spirit, Kent wants to eschew elitist audiences and create an ‘opera for the people’ which is unabashedly entertaining. She tells me gleefully, ‘I always go for young, pretty people’. Kent wants to make opera like film, reminding me that early Hollywood owed a lot to opera; for Kent, they are equally visual and musical. Audiences ‘love the drama – they come, they cry’.

Kent acknowledges that she has her disparagers. A small snobbish faction mutter about her bringing foreigners (not just the soloists – she brings everybody). But she sees detractors as a small minority. While feeling she’s ‘selling out’ with her ‘cheap and cheerful opera’, they still they give her ‘begrudging respect and begrudging admiration’. Kent, on the other hand, will always play to those who ‘vote with their feet’.

Ellen Kent’s production of La Traviata is at the New Theatre on May 3rd, and Madama Butterfly is on May 4th-5th