FESTIVAL time in Buxton is fast approaching with the 30th Buxton Festival starting on July 9 and running through to July 27, the same dates as the 29th Buxton Fringe Festival.
The Buxton Festival has recently launched an initiative called Festival for a Fiver to attract people under the age of 30, a generous offer given the quality and number of events on offer for £5 – all of them!
In other words, a bargain for anyon
e under 30 who can attend any event, opera, concert or talk in the literary series in the festival for £5.
All seats are available, including top-price opera seats at £47.
Operas this year are in-house productions of the tuneful Die Wildschütz, or The Poacher as it's sung in English, by Albert Lortzing, Handel's Samson set in the present-day Gaza Strip and the English premiere of a new comic opera by John Metcalf and Larry Tremblay, A Chair in Love.
Also an English chamber opera triple bill of Holst's Savitri and The Wandering Scholar, plus Vaughan Williams' Riders to the Sea.
Imported productions are an Opera Group staging of Kurt Weill's Street Scene and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas as seen in 1700, courtesy of a New London Consort reconstruction directed by Jonathan Miller.
The daily literary series is again littered with famous names: Antonia Fraser, Shirley Williams, Tariq Ali, Menzies Campbell, Douglas Hurd and Janet Suzman among them.
A raft of attractive daily concerts includes a Thomas Allen recital, Peter Hill playing Messiaen and a quartet called Eclectica, comprising two guitars, cellist Bernard Gregor-Smith and former City of Sheffield Youth Orchestra leader Lizzie Ball on violin.
Locally-known names can also be found in the huge Fringe Festival programme. Sheffield-based drama group One Act Drama Studio appear twice with Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Jon Jory.
Music events include concerts by the Brincliffe Consort (Mike Tipler and Steve Andrews are among its members) and David Barnard, a super-looking affair of English choral music.
Vivien Pike and Cantores Novae are there too, Vivien having other work to contend with in July, the bi-annual World Choir Games in Graz where she is on an international jury for the biggest choir festival in the world.
For a full Buxton Festival brochure call 01298 70395. Details are also available on the festival's website.
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