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I'm making a whistlestop tour of the Manchester International Festival, while working on a radio documentary.

MIF is one of the newest festivals on the calender - and there's been quite a buzz about this year's programme, the second staged.

First stop is Manchester Town Hall, where the historic committee rooms are a riot of noise and colour.

The whole building has been handed over to the festival for The Great Indoors - a series of free events for children.

There are huge queues and Event Full notices everywhere but we sneak in at the back of a cake decorating workshop - minature chocolate versions of Manchester Town Hall abound - and peek into another room where the air is thick with paper and feathers, ripped up and thrown into the air.

A long hallway is full of sculpture made from recycled objects - plastic bottles and boxes, and other rubbish made into towering works of art from which the marble busts of the great and good of Manchester now peek out.

Over the top

After that, it's off to the Palace Theatre and Rufus Wainwright's first opera.

Prima Donna - like the singer itself - is flamboyant, colourful and over the top.

A sort of Sunset Boulevard with arias, it tells the tale of reclusive opera star Madame Saint Laurent who hasn't sung in public since a disastrous premiere many years before

It's essentially an opera about opera - and as such it ticks all the classic opera boxes - outrageous villains, lavish costumes, unlikely plot twists and a dramatic death.

Perhaps the only thing missing is a memorable tune - it's lavish and lush and beautifully performed by the orchestra of Opera North but i'm not sure anyone will be humming the score for years to come.

The purists may sniff but it's enormous fun, and touching too.

Impromptu concert

And when did you last go to the opera and sit two seats away from a man in a blue satin figure-hugging dress?

Or spot the composer being mobbed as he left the stage door?

After that, it's off to Manchester Art Gallery where French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras is performing Bach beneath the swirls of a stunning white art installation made by architect Zaha Hadid.

The concert brings it all full circle - quite literally - as the music which inspired the art is performed inside the artwork.

Then it's back to the festival tent for more Rufus Wainwright, this time in an impromptu concert with his mum - the folk singer Kate McGarrigle - a thank you note which is relayed across the festival on big screens.

I'm not the only Scot in town.

There are a few Scottish organisations represented, informally perhaps but no doubt quietly checking out the competition.

Wooing audiences

Most are impressed that the festival has acquired such a buzz in just two short years.

On top of that, its director Alex Poots is an Edinburgh boy, who cut his teeth on the Edinburgh International Festival.

He insists Manchester isn't in competition with Edinburgh, despite the fears expressed in the Thundering Hooves reports and he hopes there's scope for working more closely to avoid clashes.

But now that they've noticed, I suspect many organisations north of the border will be keeping a close eye on its progress.

And for all that it's the new kid on the block, festivals could learn a lot from the MIF experience - about wooing newer and younger audiences, on thinking outside the box and on understanding that less is sometimes more when it comes to a festival.

And to that end, if you miss this year's Manchester International festival (which ends on Sunday), you'll have to wait till 2011 for the next one.