In recent years the festival has moved away from this focus, and has diversified to include a variety of circus, performance, contemporary music, dance, visual arts and children's events.
These events consisted primarily of oratorios and other large scale choral works performed by the Norwich Festival Chorus, then 300 strong.
(See list of oratorios, 19th Century) The triennial festival continued to develop a reputation throughout the Victorian and Edwardian period, but was suspended during the First World War, being revived under the patronage of Norwich's first female Lord Mayor, Ethel Colman in 1923.
[3] It saw the premieres of significant classical works including Edward Elgar's Sea Pictures in 1899 (sung by Clara Butt), E. J. Moeran's Rhapsody No.
2 for the 1924 centenary concert (based on a Norfolk folksong), Frank Bridge's Enter Spring in 1927, Ralph Vaughan Williams's Job: A Masque for Dancing in 1930, Arthur Bliss's Morning Heroes also in 1930 and Benjamin Britten's Our Hunting Fathers in 1936.
An oft-recounted story from the 1936 festival is of Vaughan Williams's intervention to stop the orchestra mocking the 22-year-old Britten's work.
The 2010 programme featured the Michael Clark Company, 7 doigts de la main, Ontroerend Goed, Nofit State Circus, Circus Ronaldo and Forced Entertainment (amongst others) and 2011 featured Artichoke's Dining with Alice, Chouf Ouchouf, Mariano Pensotti, Mariza and Kronos Quartet among others.