After its opening days of mafia melodrama and Gallic gaiety, the Buxton Festival has given its loyal audiences what amounts to a slap in the face: long Mozart and Handel rarities, grimly staged in war room and hospital.

Buxton has provided the Classical Opera Company and its conductor Ian Page with its first chance to stage its diligently researched “original” version of the 14-year-old composer’s opera seria, Mitridate, re di Ponto. What a pity, then, that Martin Lloyd-Evans has come up with such a fatuous production, and that it is so weakly cast.

After explaining to us on no fewer than five video screens how modern warfare differs from that of Mitridate’s time, we are presented with a single set, consisting of plywood boxes and any number of laptops. This is Mitridate’s war room, and arias are e-mailed.

Thus Lloyd-Evans admits defeat before he has started with Mozart’s impassioned early work. As all anybody does is stand and talk ( but how!), why not use those screens not taken up with shabbily cued surtitles to close-focus on the fold of an equally shabby costume, or a bejewelled hand?

Lacking both coherence and conviction, this Mitridate limps along for three long hours on stage and in the pit. The greatest pleasure lies in the singing of the minor character, Arbate, stylish and sweet in the voice of the Icelandic mezzo soprano Sigridur Osk Kristjansdottir. Both Allison Bell’s Aspasia and Stephen Wallace’s Farnace are perilously unstable vocally. Kishani Jayasinghe as Sifare and Mary Nelson as Ismene are secure but one-dimensional — as is Mark Le Brocq in the under-characterised title role.

Box office: 0845 1272190. More performances July 20 & 24

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