That the German dramatist Friedrich Schiller played fast and loose with historical facts will be understood by anyone familiar with his Maria Stuart (the source of an opera by Gaetano Donizetti) in which is invented a highly charged meeting that never happened between the Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I.

The playwright was up to his tricks again in his play about Joan of Arc, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, the source of a rarely performed opera by Giuseppe Verdi, which I was lucky enough to see during the Buxton Festival.

The one thing that everyone knows about the Maid of Orleans is that she was burned at the stake (on May 30, 1431), but for Schiller (and Verdi’s librettist Temistocle Solera) she escapes from prison to lead another glorious battle against the English in which she dies.

To be accurate she dies a little after the battle for, like Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto, she is permitted a surprising revival following her presumed death only to perish permanently once some surprisingly spirited singing is out of the way.

The night before Buxton’s Giovanna d’Arco, I was at Grange Park Opera for Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila. This turned out to be another opera in which historical – for which read biblical – certainties went overlooked.

There was no mention of the one fact that all know about Samson, which was that his tremendous strength arose from his promise to God that he would not cut his hair. It is true to say, though, that Carl Tanner, in the role, did appear with his locks trimmed in the scene following Delila’s worming-out of his secret and his subsequent blinding by the Philistines.

Now was the time, we thought, for him to get cracking on those temple pillars. Not so, however, in this production’s 20th-century update where dynamite accomplishes the destruction. How different from what we learned in the Ladybird Book of Bible Stories.

It was a relief, following this, to discover during our weekend in Derbyshire that certain historical events occurred more or less exactly as I once saw them depicted on stage.

My reference is to the disastrous outbreak of plague, exactly 350 years ago, in the village of Eyam. In the course of just over a year 267 of the 350 villagers died. It will probably be remembered that the fate of many was sealed by the decision, urged by the Rector, William Mompesson, that none would leave the village. The deaths were the price paid to stop the spread of contagion.

It was instructive, and life-affirming, to stand on Saturday afternoon in the parish church where this brave decision was debated and agreed. As today’s Rector, the Rev Mike Gilbert, writes: “The church building displays in so many ways the inspirational story of a community willingly sacrificing themselves for the sake of others.”

Later I walked down the main street studying the green plaques detailing the deaths. That at Plague Cottage, for instance, reads: “Mary Hadfield, formerly Cooper, lived here with her two sons, Edward and Jonathan, her new husband Alexander Hadfield and an employed hand, George Viccars. George Viccars, the first plague victim, died on the 7th September, 1665.”

The plaque goes on to list three further deaths there, ending: “Mary alone survived but lost 13 relatives”.

The stage depiction of the story came in a musical called Eyam created 25 years ago at Oxford’s Old Fire Station and deserving of a revival. With music by Andrew Peggie and lyrics by Stephen Clark, the show was developed with the help of Stephen Sondheim, Oxford University’s first visiting professor in contemporary theatre.

The OFS was then in the control of Cameron Mackintosh who used it as a launching pad for shows he hoped might graduate to the West End. The only one to do so was Moby Dick which lasted just four months at the Piccadilly Theatre, though later became a cult hit.

I reviewed Eyam here, finding accidental hilarity in the plague’s outbreak shown to be caused by an infected moth. We saw the cast running around the stage swatting at the insect while giving us a number called the Moth Song.