International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival Frank Matcham-designed 900-seat Buxton Opera House. Beginning in 2014, the main stage has been the 1,100-seat Royal Hall in Harrogate, another Matcham-designed theatre. These performances are nearly always accompanied by the "National Festival Orchestra". A review of a 2010 performance noted, "The music was up to [the Festival's] usual high standard, with the orchestra (leader, Sally Robinson) ... giving a superb and sprightly reading of the Overture and score throughout." The Festival also hosts dozens of performances and fringe activities in smaller venues. In Buxton, these included the 360-seat Pavilion Arts Centre. In Harrogate, some fringe performances have been held
Gilbert and Sullivan of the opera. In 1880, Sullivan's cantata "The Martyr of Antioch" premiered at the Leeds Triennial Music Festival, with a libretto modified by Gilbert from an 1822 epic poem by Henry Hart Milman concerning the 3rd century martyrdom of St. Margaret of Antioch. Sullivan became the conductor of the Leeds festival beginning in 1880 and conducted the performance. The Carl Rosa Opera Company staged the cantata as an opera in 1898. "Patience" (1881) satirised the aesthetic movement in general and its colourful poets in particular, combining aspects of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler and