Performer: Alexander Knox

Setting the life of Vera Brittain to the music of Ivor Novello, Buxton Festival's new musical is a welcome if overambitious showcase for them both.

Shakespeare's Nick Bottom, who claimed “a reasonable good ear in music” would surely have approved of these performances at the Barbican Hall. 

Britten’s only Shakespeare opera was a last-minute commission to celebrate the opening of the refurbished Jubilee Hall at the 1960 Aldeburgh Festival. Despite the narrow timescale, Britten and his collaborator and partner Peter Pears notoriously strove to adhere to the sixteen-century dramatic text as closely as possible. Only a handful of Shakespeare’s original lines were substantially modified.