Performer: Buxton Festival Opera

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.

Mozart's early opera seria may not be his greatest achievement – but lightness of touch from all involved highlight its charms in Jack Furness' new production. 

Every July, Buxton’s charming opera house hosts an international festival of opera, literature and the arts. This year the festival opened with a strong familiar favourite, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.

The fashion for reviving Mozart's teenage operas brings a vocally dazzling production of Lucio Silla to Buxton, nevertheless hampered by the work's own lack of believable drama and some fairly flat staging. 

A period-perfect Albert Herring from Francis Matthews for Buxton International Festival takes time to settle into its stride, but provides plenty of laughs along the way. 

A searing, edge-of-your-seat spinetingler from Elijah Moshinsky makes the strongest possible case for Verdi's first Macbeth, ideally suited to the proportions of Buxton's beautiful Opera House.