Buxton Festival
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The Buxton International Festival is an annual summer festival of opera, music and (since 2000) a literary series, held in Buxton, Derbyshire, England since its beginnings in July 1979. The 2020 festival was cancelled due to the Covid-19 crisis.[1] The 2024 Buxton International Festival will run 4-21 July.
Origins of the present-day Festival
The origins of the Festival date to September 1937, when an annual drama festival was first held (running until 1942) in conjunction with the London-based
The conductor Anthony Hose (then Head of Music at Welsh National Opera) and Malcolm Fraser (then lecturing in opera at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester) saw its potential as a venue for an opera festival. With David Rigby, who provided the business input, they spent three years planning the first Festival while the restoration was in progress.
The restored Buxton Opera House became the venue for the first Buxton Festival in 1979 with presentations of Lucia di Lammermoor (in its first complete performance in Britain), followed by Peter Maxwell Davies' The Two Fiddlers.
Productions and performers
Productions have included rarely performed operas (such as
Performers have included
The festival continues to present less well-known opera from celebrated composers, alongside a programme of classical concerts, jazz and a thriving Literary Series. 2014's operas included Antonín Dvořák's The Jacobin, Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and a concert performance of Gioachino Rossini's Otello. The Festival presented its first Autumn Literary Weekend in 2014. This developed into The Big BIF Weekend in 2019 - a combination of opera, music and book events, which last took place in October 2021.
The festival has been followed by the
Buxton Festival Fringe
The Buxton Festival Fringe is an annual open arts festival running at approximately the same time as the Buxton International Festival (3-21 July 2024).
Since 2011, Underground Venues
Buxton Rock Festival of the 1970s
On 26 September 1969 an all-night Blues Festival was held in the
See also
References
- ^ "Buxton International Festival". Buxton International Festival. Retrieved 15 March 2020.
- ISBN 1-902173-02-3.
- ^ "Buxton Festival Fringe". Buxton Festival Fringe. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
- ^ "Buxton Fringe goes from strength to strength in big year for the town".
- ^ "Fringe Latest".
- ^ "Welcome to Underground · Underground Venues at the Buxton Fringe". underthefringe.com. Retrieved 19 July 2017.
- ^ "Event Descriptions 2014". www.buxtonfringe.org.uk. Retrieved 19 July 2017.
- ^ The Market Place[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Biggest Ever Buxton Fringe!". buxtonfringe.org.uk. Retrieved 19 July 2017.
- ^ "Home to a Green Knight and more - Green Man Gallery theatre at Buxton Fringe!".