[2] The Opera House ran as a successful theatre, receiving touring companies until 1927, when it was turned into a cinema.

The Opera House also became the venue for an annual summer theatre festival from 1936 to 1942, two of them in conjunction with Lilian Baylis and her London-based Old Vic company.

People who performed at the opera house include the actor Alec Guinness, the comedians Ken Dodd, Peter Kay, Harry Hill, Sarah Millican and John Bishop, the musical artists Howard Jones, Aled Jones, Leo Sayer and Razorlight, and the ballerina Anna Pavlova.

The theatre is staffed by a small full-time technical crew for all the backstage work, setting up all the shows and artists that appear.

By the 1990s, more work was needed to repair and modernise the theatre, and from 1999 to 2001 an extensive programme of internal and external restoration took place.

[5][8] There the Literary and Dramatic Societies of Buxton College and Cavendish Grammar School staged annual performances of either Shakespeare, such as Hamlet (1966), Coriolanus (1968) and Macbeth (1970), or modern works, such as Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo (1967) and Dylan Thomas's The Doctor & the Devils (1969).

Since 1994 the Opera House also hosted the annual three-week-long International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, attracting audiences from all over the UK and from abroad.