OPERA IN THE PEAKS
• Dido and Aeneas: an English opera, by an English composer, performed by an English cast in an English opera house.
• Handel's Samson and chamber operas by Holst and Vaughan Williams in the glorious Frank Matcham Opera House.
• Private talk by Andrew Greenwood, artistic director of Buxton Festival.
• Excursions to two great and contrasting houses, Chatsworth and Haddon.
THE TOWN OF BUXTON HAS many charms, and for the festival weeks in July there is a real buzz and a friendly atmosphere. The opera house, a wonderful Frank Matcham theatre of 1903, is splendid if intimate and has excellent sight-lines and clean acoustics.
Buxton Festival’s current status is as a flourishing, artistically satisfying, adventurous and popular event. The audience has trebled since 2000. Operas rarely heard elsewhere are a speciality without excluding mainstream repertory, and productions range from the traditional to the avant garde.
Artistic standards are high, and it can bear comparison with any of the smaller opera-dominated festivals in Europe. It features both established and up and coming young singers. These predominantly youthful casts result in performances of energy and commitment.
This 30th festival is the second under the artistic directorship of Andrew Greenwood. The in-house productions we have selected for 2008 are all English: Handel’s Samson with the Orchestra of the Sixteen, and a trio of chamber operas by Holst and Vaughan Williams, with the Northern Chamber Orchestra.
Handel’s oratorio Samson, conducted by Harry Christophers, has a first-rate cast including Thomas Randle as Samson and Rebecca Bottone as Dalila.
A new full-length production of Dido and Aeneas by Jonathan Miller, brought to Buxton by The New London Consort, is reminiscent of performances in 1700, lengthened by additional music by Purcell and his peers. Title roles are played by Julia Gooding as Dido and Michael George as Aeneas.
And for something rather different, Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, an ‘American Opera’ set in working class New York in the summer of 1946. A collaboration between The Opera Group and the Young Vic, with a vibrant and young cast.
In addition the St Petersburg Quartet give an afternoon concert with a programme of Beethoven, Ravel and Tchaikovsky. And Andrew Greenwood, artistic director of the festival since 2007, will give a private talk exclusively to our group.
As for Buxton, it has been a spa town and elegant resort for centuries. The architectural evidence of this includes the peerless eighteenth-century Crescent and some grand Victorian hotels. It has the good fortune of location amidst some of the most ravishing landscape in England.
The performances will be interspersed with visits to two of the most important country houses in England, Chatsworth and Haddon Hall.