Performer: George Humphreys

A claim was made not to authenticity, but merely to “a chance to hear the work anew”.

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.

Netia Jones' new production taps into Britten's silvery underworld in a staging dominated by video wizardry which is hypnotically beautiful, but comes at a price.

Director Jo Davies' staging of Mozart’s dramma giocoso for Nederlandse Reisopera is a high-spirited  affair packed with humour, where the emphasis is decidedly more on giocoso than on the dramma.

Despite the beautiful sensitivity of La Nuova Musica, coupled with some truly sublime singing, the silliness of Cavalli’s opera is sometimes overplayed in this semi-staged production; less is, sometimes, more.

Clever staging and a high standard of acting does much to happily while away the three hours of this baroque opera in the second of ETO's Baroque extravaganza.