Buxton Festival 2010

An interesting trio of works are being planned as the festival's own productions in Buxton in 2010. Stephen Medcalf will be directing Verdi's Luisa Miller, Alessandro Talevi will direct Cornelius's The Barber of Baghdad, plus Richard Strauss's arrangement of Mozart's Idomeneo.

Peter Cornelius was friendly with Liszt and Wagner and his comic opera The Barber of Baghdad was written whilst he was staying in Weimar, where Liszt conducted the première (which was a failure). The opera is unusual for a German comic opera in that it is through composed, rather than using spoken dialogue.