There is nothing new about the "boutique" festival, as some of our newer bijou classical events are sometimes termed.

Although the decade-old event in the East Neuk of Fife and the newer Lammermuir Festival in East Lothian that begins today have swiftly made their mark, they take their place alongside Music at Paxton, at Paxton House near Berwick, and Mendelssohn on Mull, for example, which both have much longer histories.

The Ryedale Festival in North Yorkshire is another long-established event, with its 33rd fortnight-long programme taking place in July of this year. While all of these events have their own unique beginnings and idiosyncratic structures, Ryedale offers some interesting lessons, as well as providing the opera for the Lammermuir Festival tomorrow evening at Musselburgh's Brunton Theatre.

That opera is a fine production of the final such work by the earliest composer of the genre, Claudio Monteverdi. The Coronation Of Poppea is the first opera to be based on a true historical story - the Emperor Nero's obsession with his mistress Poppea and determination that she replace his wife Ottavia as Empress.

Nina Brazier's production is simply set, with a fine design by Sophie Mosberger, and has a young cast and onstage period band. For all its modern dress, it can claim much authenticity with how the audience of the 17th century might have seen it. But that, you feel certain, has not been the overriding intention of Brazier and musical director Christopher Glynn, who is also artistic director of the Ryedale Festival and here joins the Eboracum Baroque ensemble on chamber organ.

The budget for the production was a staggeringly low £6,000, so creative imagination had to do a lot of the work for which larger companies have hard cash.

Ryedale also wanted a show that could sell to other events, which it has done in Scotland to Lammermuir and Perth Concert Hall, where Lammermuir co-director James Waters programmes classical music.

As Glynn explains, that is part of a strategy he and the festival board have devised to enable the event to continue.

After 20 years of support, the Arts Council of England abruptly withdrew funding for Ryedale two years ago. The local committee faced a stark choice: decide to call it a day or raise funds to enable it to continue.

In Glynn, a pianist who had originally come to the event to perform, they had an important asset and ally. His contacts as an accompanist and teacher, and with other teachers in conservatoires in England, has provided a pool of talent on which Poppea, for example, draws.

"When we decided to carry on, we had enough reserves to make last year's festival happen, but that took us right to the edge, and we needed local donors to come in to make this year's festival happen," he says.

Although Ryedale does attract overseas visitors, with some regular attenders from the US in particular, 80 per cent of its audience is local.

When the festival came knocking on doors, Glynn says, local farmers made donations of £2,000 to £3,000 each, sums that were both significant to the donor and to the festival. The local effort has been combined by a promotional compaign to sell Ryedale to summer visitors from cities from Newscastle to Leeds. The local authority may not provide much in terms of financial support for the work, but it is more than enthusiastic to sell the festival as one of the area's attractions.

Like East Neuk, Lammermuir and Paxton - but on a grander scale - Ryedale's other great asset is its venues.

Country houses including Castle Howard and Duncombe Park are on board, alongside fine churches and Ampleforth Abbey, where Poppea was premiered, preceded the previous evening by Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 for which Robert Hollingworth and professional singers and musicians were joined by some of the monks.

For Poppea, however, only Stephanie Marshall, who sings Nero, could be said to have an established professional career, having been a company principal at English National Opera and sung at the Royal Opera House, alongside many concert performances, including a Wigmore Hall recital with Glynn as accompanist.

However she has very fine onstage partners, and not just in the other main roles of Ottavia (Maria Ostroukhova) and Poppea (Elizabeth Holmes). Look out in particular for tenor Thomas Morss, from Carlops, south of Edinburgh, whose combination of singing and acting skills in a trio of roles suggests a very promising career.

Off-stage, the important collaboration is that the people who were determined that their music festival continues to happen in lovely rural Yorkshire are in a new alliance with those doing a similar job in the countryside and small towns of Scotland, regardless of the attitude to their event by the London-based funding agency.

Whether or not it is bijou or boutique, that is good business.

Ryedale Festival Opera's The Coronation Of Poppea is at the Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, tomorrow and Perth Concert Hall on Monday, both at 7pm