CityLife

Classical festival season gets into the swing

Mary Plazas

This is the week the classical festival season gets going in earnest. Not only is the Chester Summer Music Festival already in full swing, but Buxton Festival’s feast of opera, music and literature begins tomorrow, and by next Thursday the Hallé will have begun its three-day celebration of Wagner’s Die Walküre – part of the Manchester International Festival.

MIF will also see violinist Alina Ibragimova continuing in visually enhanced promenade performances in Chetham’s buildings, from tomorrow and through to a week on Sunday – and Damon Albarn’s Doctor Dee coming to the end of its run at the Palace Theatre tomorrow.

In Chester, Kiryl Keduk, winner of the James Mottram competition at the RNCM last year, gives a lunchtime recital today at St Mary’s Centre, and star violinist Jack Liebeck is at the Town Hall with pianist Katya Apekisheva tonight.

More violin music in interesting places comes courtesy of Ruth Palmer, at The Water Tower, the Town Hall and the Cathedral Chapter House on Tuesday, and Norwegian all-female brass ensemble tenThing are at the Town Hall on Wednesday.

For sheer variety, though, you can’t beat Buxton. This is Andrew Greenwood’s departing line-up as artistic director, and he has a bigger programme than ever before, with three fully-staged home-grown opera productions.

“We’re not cutting back,” is his proud boast, even though others may be offering less, and those operas begin tomorrow night with ‘another Donizetti scorcher’ – Maria Di Rohan, a tragic melodrama set in the court of Louis XIII.

Mary Plazas, star of the MEN award-winning Lucrezia Borgia and Roberto Devereux (also Donizetti) in 2009 and 2007 respectively, takes the title role, and the Northern Chamber Orchestra, Festival Chorus, director Stephen Medcalf and conductor Greenwood make up the team (also July 12, 15, 20, 23 and 27). Sunday is the opening night of a festival production (director Olivia Fuchs) of Handel’s Saul, with Harry Christophers and the Orchestra Of The Sixteen, with Jonathan Best leading the cast, and the Festival Chorus (also July 13, 17, 21 and 24).

And on Monday Wendy Dawn Thompson and Gillian Keith – both great festival favourites in the past – lead the cast to open Ambroise Thomas’s Mignon, an opera comique based on Goethe.

Andrew Greenwood conducts the NCO and Festival Chorus, and Annilese Miskimmon, who’s done great things with Opera Theatre Company Dublin, directs (also July 16, 19, 22 and 26).

There’s also a community opera with children from local schools: it’s Tarka The Otter, by Stephen McNeff, conducted by former Hallé assistant conductor Ewa Strusinska (with the NCO). It’s at the Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton’s new venue behind the Opera House, on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.

Then there are the visiting shows. Opera Unlimited perform The Lovely Ladies, a comic opera about wine-tasting – the wines themselves sing, with the cast led by Richard Suart as Bordeaux – on Sunday and Thursday afternoon (also at the Pavilion).

Armonico Consort bring Monteverdi’s Flying Circus to the Opera House on Wednesday afternoon (and July 21). It’s about the composer’s final years, with music from L’Orfeo, The Return Of Ulysses and The Coronation Of Poppea. And Music Theatre Wales brings Turnage’s Greek (also featuring Richard Suart, plus Wigmore Hall competition winner Marcus Farnsworth) on Thursday and July 25.

And there’s a stream of ensemble and solo performances, including young Russian pianist Tatiana Dardykina (Sunday lunchtime at the Palace Hotel); opera star Susannah Glanville (24 hours later, same place); Jessica Walker with The Girl I Left Behind Me – an Opera North show about female ‘trouser’ roles in opera (Pavilion, Tuesday afternoon and July 24); and crack chamber ensemble London Concertante (St John’s Church, Thursday, 2pm).