Glyndebourne
First Person: Who is Mozart's fake garden girl?Saturday, 28 June 2014
La finta giardiniera is about seven characters in search of love. They are all pretending to some extent – they are not being truthful to themselves. It’s a classic Mozartian conceit which comes back in Così fan tutte in particular but also in Le... Read more... |
Glyndebourne: the Untold History, BBC FourMonday, 23 June 2014
Celebrating the 80th anniversary of opera at Glyndebourne, this 90-minute documentary was fascinating when it delved into the house's history, but started to lose its bearings when it came back to the present day and dwelt at laborious length over... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne Festival OperaMonday, 09 June 2014
Sex farce, class comedy, crime thriller, existential tragedy, supernatural shocker - Don Giovanni is, as Jonathan Kent notes about his production in the Glyndebourne programme, a cabinet of curiosities. Mozart's music hurdles to and fro across two... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Jonathan KentSunday, 01 June 2014
Jonathan Kent was an actor before he was a director. Indeed, he had not directed a single play when in his mid-40s he assumed control of the Almeida Theatre in 1990. By the time he and his co-artistic director Ian McDiarmid has left more than a... Read more... |
Caspar Gomez hits Glyndebourne Opera FestivalTuesday, 20 May 2014
It’s certainly different from the Glastonbury shuttle, I’ll tell you that. I’m sitting with Finetime on the minibus that takes festival-goers from Lewes Station to the opening day of Glyndebourne Opera Festival 2014.Finetime’s looking very much the... Read more... |
Eugene Onegin, GlyndebourneMonday, 19 May 2014
Is this the same Tatyana whose life depended on every word of her letter to straw idol Onegin at the 2009 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition? Then, Ekaterina Shcherbachenko – she’s since dropped the first “h” in transliteration – gave the most... Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier, GlyndebourneSunday, 18 May 2014
What spontaneous use might a silver rose take on after its formal presentation by a chubby cherub of a cavalier to a bartered bride-to-be? This and a thousand other score-co-ordinated details are things you never can predict in the hands of that... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Robin TicciatiSaturday, 10 May 2014
Poised when I met him six weeks ago between 40th anniversary celebrations of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, of which he has been a shaping chief conductor for the past five years and putting his new music directorship of Glyndebourne... Read more... |
Remembering Sir George Christie (1934-2014)Saturday, 10 May 2014
I started work at Glyndebourne in 1962 at the age of 20 and remained there for 27 years, for the last seven of which I was General Administrator. Throughout that period George was Chairman of Glyndebourne Productions, and my ultimate boss. ... Read more... |
Listed: 10 Great Trouser RolesThursday, 08 May 2014
It's the genre of gender-bending and cross-dressing, where women play warriors and men sing like women (while playing warriors). But when it comes to opera, who really wears the trousers? For at least 300 years the answer has been pretty definitive... Read more... |
Gallery: Stars of the Glyndebourne ChorusSaturday, 26 April 2014
Its constituent parts come in all sizes, tall and small, compact or full-bodied, and span the ages. But put them all together and an operatic chorus is a vast but single organism that sings – and moves – as one. The current Glyndebourne Chorus... Read more... |
A silver rose for Glyndebourne's 80thMonday, 10 March 2014
Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s 1911 “comedy for music” about love, money and masquerading in a putative 18th-century Vienna, is a repertoire staple around the world. Continental houses throw it together without a... Read more... |
