Music, performance, art, picnics and gardens combine once again this summer at the internationally renowned Glyndebourne Festival. Famous for outstanding opera productions and a tradition for dressing up to the nines, the prestigious event is a firm favourite on the summer events calendar.
Each year the Festival presents a programme of six operas, performed in a state-of-the-art opera house. Audiences, many of whom make the 60 minute train journey from London, arrive early to explore the beautiful gardens that surround the opera house, situated in the heart of the South Downs in Sussex.
Dining is an essential part of the Glyndebourne Festival experience. Every performance includes a 90-minute dinner interval during which audiences can enjoy a long, lazy picnic in the gardens, or opt for a more formal dining experience in one of three on-site restaurants.
In 2019 Glyndebourne celebrates 25 years of its award-winning opera house. Unveiled in 1994, the new auditorium increased capacity to 1,200 seats and delivered significantly improved backstage facilities. This allowed more people to enjoy world-class opera at Glyndebourne and enabled the company to stage bigger and more ambitious productions in the years that followed.
25 years on, Glyndebourne is preparing to unveil the largest building project it has undertaken since the opera house, a new state-of-the-art production hub designed by Nicholas Hare Architects. It will be home to Glyndebourne’s expert props, sets, costumes, wigs, and making departments, as well as a new rehearsal studio and music practice rooms.
Glyndebourne Festival 2019 is a season that gathers together some classic operatic fairy tales. Highlights include a rare opportunity to see a fully staged production of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, a fresh and playful new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and the Festival debut of Glyndebourne’s first-ever production of Massenet’s Cendrillon directed by actor and director Fiona Shaw.
Off-stage, visitors can enjoy exhibitions of art and sculpture across the opera house and gardens. This summer that includes the first major works by Nicholas Hare, the architect behind the new production hub at Glyndebourne, who has become a sculptor following his recent retirement. His three large-scale works, sculpted in Cor-Ten rusted steel, will be on display in the Glyndebourne gardens throughout the Festival.
An expanded gallery space within the opera house is being relaunched as Gallery ‘94. It will house an exhibition on the theme of ‘Between Worlds’, featuring work by eleven different artists that draws on the architecture and topography of Glyndebourne, to mark the 25th anniversary.
Glyndebourne Festival can once again be enjoyed on stage, on screen and online in 2019. Three of this summer’s productions will be screened in cinemas UK-wide and broadcast free online in partnership with the Telegraph Media Group.
Public booking for Glyndebourne Festival 2019 opens online on Sunday 3 March. For more information visit glyndebourne.com.
© Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo:
