Buxton Festival
Encyclopedia
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, music, and (since 2000) a literary series, held in Buxton
Buxton
Buxton is a spa town in Derbyshire, England. It has the highest elevation of any market town in England. Located close to the county boundary with Cheshire to the west and Staffordshire to the south, Buxton is described as "the gateway to the Peak District National Park"...
, Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
in England since it began in July 1979.
History
The origins of the Festival date back to 1936 when an annual drama festival was held until 1942 in conjunction with the London-based Old Vic Theatre Company. During the early 1970s, it was best known as one of the UK's most prominent rock festivals, with most major rock bands of the day appearing, including Mott The Hoople, The Faces, Lindisfarne, Canned Heat, Chuck Berry, Nazareth, Edgar Broughton Band, Groundhogs, Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Medicine Head, Brewers Droop, Roy Wood and Wizzard. During July 2007, it was the subject of several features on Jeff Cooper's 'Cooper Collection' show on 106.6 Smooth Radio106.6 Smooth Radio
106.6 Smooth Radio was an Independent Local Radio station for the East Midlands, which replaced Saga 106.6 FM at 6am on Monday 26 March 2007. In turn it replaced itself by the national Smooth Radio service which was launched on 4 October 2010...
, whose transmission area includes much of Derbyshire.
Inspired to encourage the restoration of the Buxton Opera House
Buxton Opera House
Buxton Opera House is in The Square, Buxton, Derbyshire, England. It is a 902-seat opera house that hosts the annual Buxton Festival and International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, among others, as well as pantomime at Christmas, musicals and other entertainments year-round. Hosting live...
, a classic Frank Matcham
Frank Matcham
Frank Matcham was a famous English theatrical architect. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery.-Early career:...
building, much respected conductor Anthony Hose (then Head of Music at Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera is an opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it gives more than 120 performances of eight main stage operas to a combined audience of around 150,000 people...
) and Malcolm Fraser (then lecturing in opera at the Royal Northern College of Music
Royal Northern College of Music
The Royal Northern College of Music is a music school in Manchester, England. It is located on Oxford Road in Chorlton on Medlock, at the western edge of the campus of the University of Manchester and is one of four conservatories associated with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music...
in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
) saw its potential as a venue for an opera festival. They spent three years planning the first one while restoration was underway. The restored Buxton Opera House was the venue for the first Buxton Festival in 1979 with presentations of Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
(in its first ever complete performance in Britain), followed by Peter Maxwell Davies
Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...
' The Two Fiddlers.
Productions and performers
From these first successes, the Festival has made a significant impact on the operatic culture of Britain with new productions of rarely-performed operas (such as BrittenBenjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's Let's Make an Opera (1980); Domenico Cimarosa
Domenico Cimarosa
Domenico Cimarosa was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school...
's Il matrimonio segreto
Il matrimonio segreto
Il matrimonio segreto is an opera in two acts, music by Domenico Cimarosa, on a libretto by Giovanni Bertati, based on the play The Clandestine Marriage by George Colman the Elder and David Garrick...
(1981 & 1993); Kodály
Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is best known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method.-Life:Born in Kecskemét, Kodály learned to play the violin as a child....
's Háry János
Háry János
Háry János is a "Hungarian folk opera" in four acts by Zoltán Kodály to a Hungarian libretto by Béla Paulini and Zsolt Harsányi, based on the comic epic The Veteran by János Garay. The first performance was at the Royal Hungarian Opera House, Budapest, 1926...
(in its British stage premiere in 1982); Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...
's Griselda
Griselda (Vivaldi)
Griselda is a dramma per musica in three acts that was composed by Antonio Vivaldi. The opera uses a revised version of the 1701 Italian libretto by Apostolo Zeno that was based on Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron . The celebrated Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni was hired to adapt the libretto...
(1983, but not seen anywhere since its original Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
presentation in 1735); Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....
's Médée
Medea
Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...
(1984, in its original French dialogue never seen in Britain); and, from 1986, many productions of Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's operas, as well as many others by Cimarosa (in 1989 it presented three).
Performers of the quality of Thomas Allen, Rosalind Plowright
Rosalind Plowright
Rosalind Anne Plowright OBE is an English opera singer who spent much of her career as a soprano but in 1999 changed to the mezzo-soprano range.- Life and career :...
, Jean Rigby, Alan Opie
Alan Opie
Alan Opie is a Cornish baritone, primarily known as an opera singer.He attended Truro School and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the London Opera Centre before joining the Sadler's Wells Opera...
, Nigel Kennedy
Nigel Kennedy
Nigel Kennedy is a British born violinist and violist. He made his early career in the classical field, and he has performed and recorded most of the major violin concerti...
, Cleo Laine
Cleo Laine
Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth, DBE is a jazz singer and an actress, noted for her scat singing and vocal range...
, John Ogdon
John Ogdon
John Andrew Howard Ogdon was an English pianist and composer.-Biography:Ogdon was born in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, and attended Manchester Grammar School, before studying at the Royal Northern College of Music between 1953 and 1957, where his fellow students under Richard Hall...
, Alan Bates
Alan Bates
Sir Alan Arthur Bates CBE was an English actor, who came to prominence in the 1960s, a time of high creativity in British cinema, when he demonstrated his versatility in films ranging from the popular children’s story Whistle Down the Wind to the "kitchen sink" drama A Kind of Loving...
, Dame Janet Baker, Victoria de los Ángeles
Victoria de los Ángeles
Victoria de los Ángeles was a Spanish Catalan operatic soprano and recitalist whose career began in the early 1940s and reached its height in the years from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Her obituary in The Times noted that she must be counted “among the finest singers of the second half...
,Dame Margaret Price and Sarah Brightman
Sarah Brightman
Sarah Brightman is an English classical crossover soprano, actress, songwriter and dancer. She is famous for possessing a vocal range of over 3 octaves and singing in the whistle register...
. The current resident orchestra at the festival is the Northern Chamber Orchestra
Northern Chamber Orchestra
The Northern Chamber Orchestra is a chamber orchestra based in Manchester, England. Established in 1967, the orchestra gives concerts at Heritage Centre, Macclesfield, St Ann's Church, Manchester, as well as Blackburn, Skipton, Lancaster and Tatton Park, Knutsford...
.
Since 2002, the Festival has presented five or six operas each summer. In 2006 it presented eight operas ranging from Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
's early Apollo and Hyacinth to Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
's The Nose
The Nose (opera)
The Nose is a satirical opera composed by Dmitri Shostakovich. The libretto by Shostakovich, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Georgy Ionin, and Alexander Preis is based on the story The Nose by Nikolai Gogol. The plot concerns a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own...
, but including works by Telemann
Georg Philipp Telemann
Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg, Zellerfeld, and Hildesheim, Telemann entered the University of Leipzig to study law, but eventually...
, Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
, Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
, Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
and Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
.
The Buxton Festival Fringe
The Buxton Festival Fringe is an annual open arts festival running at the same time as the Buxton Festival. The festival hosts comedy, theatre, dance, music, street performances, puppetry, film, performance art, talks and shows for children as well as other impromptu events. The festival celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2009, and that year boasted a record 140 entries with over 500 individual performances. The number of entries has been gradually rising with some 160 in 2011 adding up to over 550 individual performances. This makes it one of the largest fully independent Fringes in the United Kingdom, along with Brighton Festival FringeBrighton Festival Fringe
The Brighton Festival Fringe is an open access arts festival held annually in Brighton, England. It is the largest annual arts festival in England.- Introduction :...
and Edinburgh Fringe
Edinburgh Fringe
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival. Established in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place annually in Scotland's capital, in the month of August...
. As well using around fifty venues around the town and outside it, Fringe 2011 included the professionally managed venue group at Underground Venues. In 2011 Underground Venues programmed events at the newly refurbished Pavilion Arts Centre and Studio with Ed Reardon, Isy Suttie
Isy Suttie
Isobel "Isy" Suttie is an English stand up comedian, actress, writer, and musician. She is best known for playing the role of Dobby in the British sitcom Peep Show.-Career:...
and Henning Wehn
Henning Wehn
Henning Wehn is a German stand-up comedian based in London.-Career:Since October 2003 Wehn has been self-styled the "German Comedy Ambassador in London"...
being among the artists featured.
The festival is followed by the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, which runs for three weeks in August each year.