Buxton International Festival celebrates the ‘future’ of opera with its innovative Shorts programme this month.
Shorts brings together seven award-winning writers and composers from the worlds of jazz, folk, classical and contemporary theatre who have created a series of condensed operas, each of which shares relevant and contemporary stories in a fresh take on the art form.
Manchester-based Carmel Smickersgill and Sunday Times Playwright Award Winner Josh Overton kick off this emotional and innovative narrative journey with Inevitable. Filled with gallows humour and raw emotion, a stark, unremarkable office is overshadowed by the doomsday clock. Three generations of humans labour over a rusty old crank, giving their lives to keep the world ticking, until the creeping doubt of an inevitable end sparks.
Next, BBC Folk Award Winner, Martin Green, presents the love story Life Gets Stretched. In a time of war, a couple meet, fall in love, and marry. But life is long, and people change, will their bond prove strong enough? With folk influences and a strong, physical theatre energy, this is a story of change and growing apart.
A celebration of LGBTQ+ history, Disorderly House recounts a real-life story from 1927. In London’s Fitzroy Square, renowned dancer Bobby Britt hosts an exuberant gathering for his bohemian guests. Britt treats his party to a performance of Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils, but the entertainment crashes down when the police raid and he is arrested for keeping a ‘disorderly house’. The opera is performed in English and Polari (a hidden language primarily spoken by gay men in Britain).
Drawing things to a close, jazz, gospel and opera star Thandanani Gumede (Opera North, Manchester Jazz Festival, Zulu Tradition) and Zodwa Nyoni, Zimbabwean-born theatre writer (Royal Exchange, Leeds Playhouse & Tiata Fahodzi, Kiln Theatre) have teamed up to create Tears Are Not Meant to Stay Inside.
In a modern world, this opera explores whether we can still find deep connections to our spiritual heritage. Audiences can expect an uplifting, emotional and joyous experience, one engulfed in a blend of classical opera and traditional African sounds, performed in Zulu and Ndebele.
The operas are directed by Marcus Desando and Rebecca Melzer and designed by Eliott Squire.
Helen Goodman from Buxton International Festival says: “We are excited to be working with a creative team of such incredible calibre. In their respective fields of the arts they have already produced work of exceptional quality and creative vision. Together, using opera as their medium of expression, we think that the possibilities are limitless.
“They will express stories that will take audiences to the limits of their emotions and demonstrate the enduring power of opera in a modern context. This commission is just an example of Buxton International Festival’s commitment to presenting world-class opera and to inviting audiences to experience new and challenging theatrical experiences.”
Shorts comes to the Pavilion Arts Centre in Buxton from Sun 13 Jul – Fri 25 Jul. Book your tickets using the button below.
Sun 13 Jul - Fri 25 Jul, Pavilion Arts Centre, St John's Rd, Buxton SK17 6BE
- Words:
- Bradley Lengden
- Published on:
- Mon 14 Jul 2025