Performer: Stephen Unwin

Fine performances from a confident cast brought some terrific singing as well as depth of characterisation in Stravinsky’s only full-length opera.

Two contemporary operas give us darkness and death in riveting, inexorable performances. 

Stephen Unwin's straight direction and some talented young singers from the Royal Academy of Music Opera school made these two works a real treat. 

Amateur gangsters, but a nicely sung, if rather staid Lucia di Lammermoor at Buxton, worth seeing for its excellent mad scene.

The charm-ometer was cranked firmly to ‘high’ yesterday evening for the opening opera of this year’s Buxton Festival with a performance of The Jacobin, an opera close to Dvořák’s heart. 

Buxton, a small spa town in Derbyshire, has been home to one of the most imaginative and important festivals in Britain for over thirty years.