Since 1934, the country house 54 miles south of London has been the setting of an opera festival that stages productions of the highest, world-class quality. They are performed indoors in a modern opera house that stands next to the manor house.
The festival is also famous for picnics. Each night the audience streams outside to sip Champagne and Chablis and eat smoked salmon sandwiches in the beautiful gardens, lawns and fields. Some sophisticates are said to place a bottle of Meursault in the estate’s river before the opera begins so it will be nicely chilled for the dining interval.
Until 2020, the festival had been held annually, apart from during the Second World War and in 1993 when the opera house was being rebuilt. Then Covid struck, and the entire months-long schedule was cancelled.
This year the festival is back, though there will probably be smaller, socially distanced audiences, and some changes have been made to the programme. Refunds will be offered if performances are cancelled or ticket-holders cannot attend because of Covid.
“We are determined to present a festival this summer in whatever form is possible,” Glyndebourne managing director Sarah Hopwood told Afaranwide. “The health and well-being of everyone visiting or working at Glyndebourne is our top priority. We look forward to a summer of world-class opera.”
The picnics will still be there – in fact, the traditional 90-minute interval will be extended slightly to give diners more time to return to their seats. Picnics vary from a few sausage rolls and pork pies in a supermarket carrier bag to lavish, catered affairs with fine porcelain and tables seating 20 or more.
Whatever you have, it’s sure to taste superb in the cooling evening air as the beautiful music you’ve been listening to echoes in your ears. If you like, you can order a picnic from Glyndebourne and pick it up when you arrive. There are also more formal dining options.
When we first went to Glyndebourne many years ago we were not quite on top of the picnic thing, so instead of eating during the interval we went for a walk around the grounds. We chanced upon a pub used by staff and crew, and were made very welcome when we popped in for a beer.
You can also stop off at the Glyndebourne Shop and buy, for example, “Too Hot to Handel” oven gloves, or the perfect Glyndebourne picnic accessory, a bottle opener shaped like the treble and bass clefs.
Of course, any summer event in the UK is subject to disruption from the weather, so one year we and our friends ate our picnic in a packed marquee as the rain pelted down outside. There will be marquees this year, though Covid precautions mean they’ll be less crowded.
The event is run by the Glyndebourne Festival Society, and several levels of membership offering various benefits are available. The waiting list for full membership, the highest tier, is 10 to 12 years, and the list of benefits include priority access to tickets. It costs £500 to join the waiting list, and full members pay an annual subscription of £189.
It has to be said that Glyndebourne is not a cheap night out. Opera is notoriously expensive to stage – the cost of the principal performers, choir, orchestra, sets and costumes quickly adds up. Together, though, they form more than the sum of their parts, and can result in a wonderful merging of music, singing, drama and visual spectacle. Glyndebourne receives no public funding, relying instead on tickets sales, membership fees and corporate sponsors.
All this means that tickets can cost as much as (gulp) £260 ($357) each. Nevertheless, seats for the more popular productions, such as Mozart’s Così fan tutte, are quickly snapped up – even more so this year as capacity is likely to be halved because of Covid.
The society has various initiatives to increase accessibility, such as subsidised tickets for the under-30s and under-40s. The company goes on tour in the autumn and winter, taking productions to theatres across the UK at more affordable prices. Some operas can be viewed on classical music streaming platforms such as medici.tv and Marquee TV.
The story behind the festival is as romantic as that of any opera. John Christie, the owner of the estate, fell in love with the Canadian soprano Audrey Mildmay when she appeared at a concert he staged there. They married in 1931, and Christie decided to build an opera house in the grounds where Mildmay went on to sing many times. The aim from the start was to produce work of the highest international standard. Mozart has always been the company’s favourite composer.
Fast-forward to 2009, and another Christie, John’s grandson Gus, married another soprano, Australian Danielle de Niese. Four years earlier she had caused a sensation at Glyndebourne when she played Cleopatra in a remarkable Bollywood-style production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare. Sue and I were in the audience one night in 2005 and, like everyone else, we were bowled over by her exuberant and amusing performance, and the overall brilliance of the staging.
