Buxton prepares for dramatic opera programme
CLASSICAL
All sensible opera buffs have long ago booked tickets and will next week be heading towards the Buxton Festival where they will luxuriate in a feast of rarely-staged works, most appearing in new productions specifically created for the festival.
It opens in dramatic fashion with a story of poison, incest and revenge in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, about the most infamous member of the murderous Borgia family who lived in Italy in the 18th century. Now on her fourth husband, she sees to the destruction of her enemies and in so doing kills herself.
The large cast contains many faces familiar at Opera North, Mary Plazas in the name role, with Jonathan Best in the part of Gubetta. The production comes from Stephen Medcalf, who has already delighted us in previous seasons, with Andrew Greenwood, the festival's artistic director, conducting.
From the highly-charged to the frivolous with the doyen of French comic operetta, Andre Messager, serving up his frothy Veronique, the fantasy of a woman of high rank who disguises herself as a florist's shop worker, only to find the same wealthy man again falling in love with her.
A rare sighting of Mitridante, composed when Mozart was 14; Mendelssohn's Camacho's Wedding in a concert version; Orlando to mark the 250th anniversary of Handel's death, and Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse complete the opera line-up.
Lots of solo recitals, chamber music and concerts in this impressive 19 days, including the Australian, Amsterdam and Barbirolli String Quartets; pianists Ashley Wass, Dmitri Alexeev, Nikolai Demidenko and Freddy Kempf, with vocalists Ann Murray and Jonathan Lemalu.
Buxton Festival, Jul 10-28, 0845 1272190.
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Tuesday 22 May 2012
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