Amidst the puppets and pranksters, Miriam Margolyes’ Peter promises to bring the Adelaide Symphony’s house down.

The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra has launched its 2017 season with top-notch soloists, a mix of old and new music, and with storytelling very much to the fore. And while the likes of Alina Ibragimova and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet should bring plenty of sparkle to some of the sober parts of the programme, that doyen of raconteurs Miriam Margolyes looks set to grab her share of column inches with her much-anticipated take on Peter and the Wolf.

Although he has plenty to look forward to, Principal Conductor Nicholas Carter begins with a brief synopsis of where the orchestra is now, before going on to talk about where they are going. “Opening the 2016 season with Simon O’Neill, Michelle DeYoung, and Shane Lowrencev singing Die Walküre in the Festival Theatre was a personal highlight for me, for the orchestra as well, and also a bit of a coup for Adelaide,” he says. “The city has developed a close relationship with Wagner over the past two decades, and to revisit him in this symphonic context was really...