Puccini's Il Tabarro (The Cloak) is rarely staged here, so any chance to hear it is a bonus, even in a concert performance such as this. It is the first of a triptych of one-act operas, and its archetypal plot uncovers adultery and murder among the barges on the Seine. For all its brevity, though, it seems somewhat unfocussed; too many characters, too much incidental detail.

Nevertheless the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra had assembled a cast to grace any opera house, and with the orchestra's chief conductor Gianandrea Noseda on the podium, theatricality was guaranteed. While none of the singers needed a score, they took time to settle, although as the emotional noose tightened, so the voices latched onto the drama.

At first Miroslav Dvorsky made a rather blunt Luigi, the soprano's bit on the side, but he caught the character's doomed impulsiveness. As the jealous husband who eventually kills him, Lado Ataneli was stern, but that is in the character, and when he came to the realisation of what his wife was up to, his voice acquired a chilling intensity. The best singing, though, came from the only Italian in the cast: Barbara Frittoli filled the hall with Giorgetta's melancholy longing, but there was also frank sensuality as well as heart-stopping desperation as she discovered her lover's corpse.

The concert opened with Rachmaninov's First Symphony, a work so chock-full of ideas that, even over a span of 50 minutes, it can barely find room for them. Noseda and his players gave it every chance, breathing easily in slower passages, finding an electrifying energy for the fast stuff. Even odd moments of roughness felt just right.

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