Mainly Opera and Ballet
Of the four operas I saw in four days at Buxton, The Boatswain’s Mate by Ethel Smyth was the most fun. Like Haydn’s La Canterina this was really an operetta, both providing a delightful contrast to the blood and thunder of Verdi’s Ernani. Only Peter Brook’s take on Carmen seriously disappointed — see my review …
This year’s Buxton Festival opened with a look back at the past, in a musical set to works from the 1930s by Ivor Novello which featured the activist and pacifist Vera Brittain, who lived in Buxton during her teenage years. A moving tribute, and very different from Bellini’s La Sonnambula on the second night, and …
A simple production by using images of future events as a clever device to inject an element of fatalism. Conducted by the new artistic director Adrian Kelly it boasted luxury casting with Joshua Bloom as Prince Gremin, along with George Humphreys as an Onegin who acquired sympathetic gravitas as the opera progressed, plus fine performances …
