Buxton International Festival Announces 2027 Opera Season

The Buxton International Festival has announced its 2027 season, which will run between July 7 and 25, 2027. The programme lists seven opera titles. Among them sits a world premiere: Thea Musgrave's "Orlando – An Escapade," based on Virginia Woolf's novel "Orlando."

The announcement, reported by OperaWire, sets out a season built on both rare repertoire and co-productions with partner companies across England.

What is on the programme?

The festival opens its slate with familiar repertoire. Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffmann" will arrive in a production created in collaboration with Norwich Theatre Royal. Richard Strauss takes two slots. His "Ariadne auf Naxos" appears in the line-up, alongside "Salome: Dance Toward Ruin," an OperaUpClose production staged in partnership with Opera North and artsdepot.

Italian comic opera fills the rest of the announced titles:

• Rossini's "La gazzetta"
• Donizetti's "Don Pasquale," presented in an Opera della Luna production
• A concert production of Mozart's "Die Entführung aus dem Serail"

The concert format for the Mozart marks the one announced title staged without full production resources. The remainder are staged or co-produced works.

What does the premiere mean for the festival?

The Musgrave premiere is the strongest signal in the announcement. "Orlando – An Escapade" adapts Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel, a text whose centuries-spanning, gender-shifting protagonist has drawn composers and theatre-makers for decades. Musgrave's opera joins a programme otherwise anchored in nineteenth-century repertoire, from Offenbach and Rossini to Donizetti and Strauss. The contrast gives the 2027 season a contemporary centrepiece alongside its canonical core.

The co-production structure is the second signal. Norwich Theatre Royal, Opera North, artsdepot, OperaUpClose and Opera della Luna all appear as partners. For a festival of Buxton's scale, the network of collaborators spreads production costs and extends the life of new stagings beyond a single festival run. Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffmann" and "Salome: Dance Toward Ruin" both carry partner credits, which suggests these productions may tour after their Buxton outings.

What happens next?

Further information on performance dates and details will be announced in the coming months, according to the announcement. The festival has named the works, the producing partners and the running window of July 7 to 25, 2027, but casting, creative teams and the day-by-day calendar remain unpublished.

Audiences planning to attend will need those details before booking. The 19-day window across July 2027 must accommodate seven titles, including one concert staging and one world premiere. How the festival schedules its premiere within that frame — and which singers and directors take on Musgrave's Woolf adaptation — will shape the season's draw when full details emerge.