fri 10/01/2025

Glyndebourne

The Tom Paine effect: Billy Budd in Lewes

Set-up for a link between Glyndebourne and the 'Rights of Man' at the Tom Paine Printing Press

When Billy Budd, too-innocent hero of Britten's opera by way of Melville's trouble-at-sea novella, bids farewell to the Rights o'Man, his superior officers prick up their ears at the implications of mutiny. It's a ship he hymns, but the connection...

Read more...

Così Fan Tutte, Glyndebourne Festival Opera

Nick Hytner's production of 'Così fan tutte': from a cool start to a blazingly tense end

Cosi fan tutte’s arc of human experience is peculiarly effective when heard at Glyndebourne. With the mid-way picnic and wine in the setting sun, how much more aware are you of how easy it is as a day goes by to take leave of one’s senses and behave...

Read more...

Billy Budd, Glyndebourne Festival Opera

HMS Indomitable: Billy Budd, good but flawed, and on his way to a terrible death

Silence. Near-darkness. Oozy weeds of orchestral strings twist in the mind of Edward Fairfax Vere (John Mark Ainsley), remembering the tragic events of 1797 when he was Captain of the HMS Indomitable. From that awe-inspiring start through to one of...

Read more...

Glyndebourne announces 2011 operas

Rusalka and her sisters: Melly Still's bewitching production returns to Glyndebourne next summer

It used to be a treat saved up for the end of the season, when a Christie of Glyndebourne would step before the curtain and announce the next year's operas. Now, like everyone else, Glyndebourne is jumping in quick with its plans, partly, I guess,...

Read more...

Bernstein on Broadway, Queen Elizabeth Hall

One girl can hit a high C, and how; the other would surely melt the iciest-hearted in Rodgers and Hammerstein torchsongs. That's Roberta Alexander, on the evidence of her "Somewhere" last night. Together with classy lyric-coloratura Claron McFadden...

Read more...

Lawyers and Libretti

Sarastro initating Pamina in Allen & Overy's Magic Flute

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first: if a law firm is going to put on an opera, it should probably be Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial by Jury. Instead, having progressed through G&S’s Mikado and Pirates of Penzance in previous years,...

Read more...

Glyndebourne Opera, 2010 Season

Glyndebourne Opera's headline news this summer is its first-ever production of Britten's Billy Budd, to be directed by Donmar Warehouse director Michael Grandage in his own first venture into opera. A new Don Giovanni with Gerald Finley and a...

Read more...

Classical and Opera 2000-9: The Highs and Lows

 No great new movements or radically transformational figures emerged to dominate classical music in the Noughties (not even him up there). Just one small nagging question bedevilled us: will the art form survive? Well, it has. What appeared to...

Read more...

A Merry Little Christmas Eve: theartsdesk recommends

As we all have only one shopping day left, theartsdesk hopes to make Christmas Eve a little easier by offering a few enlightened recommendations. From our writers on new and classical music, opera and ballet, film and comedy, here is a list of CDs...

Read more...
Subscribe to Glyndebourne