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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.
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 Old Vic Theatre Company under Lilian Baylis. In addition to plays at the Buxton Opera House, the festival ran a summer school at the adjoining Playhouse Theatre. The Festival as it exists today came about because of the inspiration in the 1970s to encourage the restoration of the Buxton Opera House, a classic Frank Matcham building. [2]
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 have included rarely performed operas (such as Britten's Let's Make an Opera (1980); Domenico Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto (1981 and 1993); Kodály's Háry János (in its British stage premiere in 1982); Vivaldi's Griselda (1983, but not seen anywhere since its original Venice presentation in 1735); Cherubini's Médée (1984, in its original French dialogue never seen in Britain); and, from 1986, many productions of Handel's operas, as well as many others by Cimarosa (in 1989 it presented three).
Performers have included Thomas Allen, Rosalind Plowright, Alan Opie, Nigel Kennedy, Cleo Laine, John Ogdon, Alan Bates, Dame Janet Baker, Victoria de los Ángeles, Margaret Price, Lesley Garrett and Sarah Brightman. The current resident orchestra at the festival (as of 2008 [update] ) is the Northern Chamber Orchestra.
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 International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, which normally runs for three weeks in August each year in Buxton but moved to Harrogate for 2014.
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). [3] The festival hosts comedy, theatre, dance, music, street performances, film, performance art, talks and shows for children as well as other impromptu events. The festival celebrated its 40th Fringe in 2019 with 220 entries adding up to over 500 individual performances and making this the biggest Buxton Fringe to date. [4] It is one of the largest fully independent Fringes in the United Kingdom, along with Brighton Festival Fringe and Edinburgh Fringe. The 2020 Fringe was mainly online with a few physical events. There were 101 events. [5]
Since 2011, Underground Venues [6] has been programming events at the newly refurbished Pavilion Arts Centre and Studio with Ed Reardon, Isy Suttie, Henning Wehn and Terry Christian [7] being among the artists who have featured. A new managed venue, The Market Place, ran for a year in 2014 [8] and 2017 saw the arrival of another new managed venue, The Rotunda. [9] The Green Man Gallery in Buxton has also become a significant managed venue for the Fringe. [10]
On 26 September 1969 an all-night Blues Festival was held in the Buxton Pavilion Gardens. Fleetwood Mac and many other top bands performed. During the early 1970s, it was best known as one of the UK's most prominent rock festivals, with most major rock bands of the day appearing, including Mott The Hoople, The Faces, Lindisfarne, Canned Heat, Chuck Berry, Nazareth, Edgar Broughton Band, Groundhogs, Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Medicine Head, Brewers Droop, Roy Wood and Wizzard. During July 2007 it was the subject of several features on Jeff Cooper's 'Cooper Collection' show on 106.6 Smooth Radio.
Buxton is a spa town in the Borough of High Peak, Derbyshire, in the East Midlands region of England. It is England's highest market town, sited at some 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level. It lies close to Cheshire to the west and Staffordshire to the south, on the edge of the Peak District National Park. In 1974, the municipal borough merged with other nearby boroughs, including Glossop, to form the local government district and borough of High Peak.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 different shows in 322 venues. Established in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place in Edinburgh every August. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has become a world-leading celebration of arts and culture, surpassed only by the Olympics and the World Cup in terms of global ticketed events. As an event it "has done more to place Edinburgh in the forefront of world cities than anything else" according to historian and former chairman of the board, Michael Dale.
The Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival is an annual arts festival held every August in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Produced by the Fringe Theatre, it is the oldest and largest fringe theatre festival in North America. The Edmonton Fringe is a founding member of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals.
Aberdeen International Youth Festival was a festival of performing arts and one of Scotland's major international cultural events, which ran from 1981 to 2017.
Buxton Opera House is in The Square, Buxton, Derbyshire, England. It is a 902-seat opera house that hosts the annual Buxton Festival and the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, among others, as well as pantomime at Christmas, musicals and other entertainments year-round. Hosting live performances until 1927, the theatre then was used mostly as a cinema until 1976. In 1979, it was refurbished and reopened as a venue for live performance.
The International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival was founded in 1994 by Ian Smith and his son Neil and is held every summer in England. The two- or three-week Festival of Gilbert and Sullivan opera performances and fringe events attracts thousands of visitors, including performers, supporters, and G&S enthusiasts from around the world. The Festival was held in Buxton, Derbyshire, from 1994 to 2013, and from 2014 to 2022, it was held in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, usually with a week in Buxton preceding the main part of the Festival. The entire Festival returned to Buxton in 2023.
Richard Demarco CBE is a Scottish artist and promoter of the visual and performing arts.
The city of Glasgow, Scotland, has many amenities for a wide range of cultural activities, from curling to opera and from football to art appreciation; it also has a large selection of museums that include those devoted to transport, religion, and modern art. In 2009 Glasgow was awarded the title UNESCO Creative City of Music in recognition of its vibrant live music scene and its distinguished heritage. Glasgow has three major universities, each involved in creative and literary arts, and the city has the largest public reference library in Europe in the form of the Mitchell Library. Scotland's largest newspapers and national television and radio companies are based in the city.
Toronto is the largest city of Canada and one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Many immigrant cultures have brought their traditions languages and music to Toronto. Toronto, the capital of the province of Ontario, is a major Canadian city along Lake Ontario's northwestern shore. It's a dynamic metropolis with a core of soaring skyscrapers, all dwarfed by the iconic, free-standing CN Tower. Toronto also has many green spaces, from the orderly oval of Queen's Park to 400-acre High Park and its trails, sports facilities and zoo.
The Edinburgh Festival Theatre is a performing arts venue located on Nicolson Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is used primarily for performances of opera and ballet, large-scale musical events, and touring groups. After its most recent renovation in 1994, it seats 1,915. It is one of the major venues of the annual summer Edinburgh International Festival and is the Edinburgh venue for the Scottish Opera and the Scottish Ballet.
The Calgary Fringe Festival is an annual Fringe theatre festival in Calgary, Alberta.
The performing arts community in Louisville, Kentucky is undergoing a renaissance. The Kentucky Center, dedicated in 1983, located in the downtown hotel and entertainment district, is a premiere performing arts center. It features a variety of plays and concerts, and is the performance home of the Louisville Ballet, Louisville Orchestra, Broadway Across America - Louisville, Music Theatre Louisville, Stage One, KentuckyShow! and the Kentucky Opera, which is the twelfth oldest opera in the United States. The center also manages the historic W. L. Lyons Brown Theatre, which opened in 1925 and is patterned after New York's acclaimed Music Box Theatre.
The Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival is a 14-day annual arts festival that takes place in Orlando, Florida, every May. The festival features 850 ticketed theatrical performances on indoor and outdoor stages, produced by local, national and international artists. It is an open access performing arts festival, meaning there is no selection committee, and anyone may participate, with any type of performance.
The National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company is an English professional repertory company that performs Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. Founded in 1995 to perform at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, the company generally stages three or four productions each summer, giving up to 16 performances in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, and also touring.
Buxton Pavilion Gardens is a Victorian landscaped public park in the spa town of Buxton in Derbyshire. The River Wye flows through the gardens, which are a Grade II* listed public park of Special Historic Interest.
The Pavilion Arts Centre was opened in 1889 as the new Entertainment Stage theatre on St John's Road in Buxton, Derbyshire, England. It is part of the Pavilion Gardens complex of buildings in the town's central Conservation Area. It has a main 360-seat theatre, and since 2017 it has been the home of Buxton Cinema.
