Classical: Opera at Buxton festival

Those looking for rarely performed operas may not have noticed that Buxton Festival are this year presenting Verdi's Macbeth, not in the 1865 version we often see, but in the original score from 1847, and the two are quite different.
By The Newsroom
Published 30th Jun 2017, 08:27 BST
Updated 18th Jul 2017, 08:44 BST
IN GOOD VOICE: Tenor Joshua Ellicott is appearing at the festival.IN GOOD VOICE: Tenor Joshua Ellicott is appearing at the festival.
IN GOOD VOICE: Tenor Joshua Ellicott is appearing at the festival.

It shares this year’s three major productions with Mozart’s Lucio Silla composed in a matter of weeks in his sixteenth year, the deeply intense score based on the tyrant, Silla, who is redeemed by love.

When in the planning stage, I guess Buxton never envisaged the many recent productions of Benjamin Britten’s gentle comedy, Albert Herring, the young man who has never had a girl-friend until Sid and Nancy get him drunk and take him out to ‘sow a few wild oats’, or does he?

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The famous Australian soprano. Kate Ladner, sings Lady Macbeth in the first staging of a production from the renowned Verdi specialist, Elijah Moshinsky; York University trained tenor, Joshua Ellicott is Silla with the period instruments of the English Consort, while Bradley Smith is the guileless Albert Herring.

You can take in the three operas on successive nights over the seventeen days, but among the 125 events you may also want to see the pianist Paul Lewis (July 8); Brodsky Quartet (July 10), and three Northern Chamber Orchestra events (13, 16 and 20 July).

Buxton Festival runs from July 7 to 23.

Tickets are available by calling the box office on 01298 72190 or online at www.buxtonfestival.co.uk

Related topics:BuxtonPaul Lewis