Glyndebourne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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- This article is about the country house and its opera house. See Glyndebourne Festival Opera for the summer opera festival.
| Glyndebourne | |
 Glyndebourne House with the auditorium in the right background, August 1, 2006 |
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| Building | |
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| Type | Opera house |
| Location | Near Lewes in East Sussex, England |
| Construction | |
| Completed | |
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Glyndebourne is a 700-year old country house and opera house near Lewes in East Sussex, England. Since 1934 it has been the venue of the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera.
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[edit] History of the house
The exact age of the house is unknown, but some surviving timber framing and pre-Elizabethan panelling makes an early sixteenth-century date the most likely. In 1618, it came into the possession of the Hay family, passing to John Hay Langham in the 1820s. He inherited his father's estate in Northamptonshire in 1833 and relinquished Glyndebourne, which, after litigation between rival claimants, passed to Mr Langham Christie.
Langham Christie's son, William Langham Christie, made substantial alterations to the house in the 1870s. First, a brick extension hid the house's seventeenth-century facade, while ornate stonework and balustrading was added. Then, in 1876, the architect Ewan Christian was engaged to install bay windows and add decorative brickwork to give the house the Jacobethan appearance which can still be seen from the gardens today. Some of the exterior of the older parts of the house can be seen from the driveway next to the theatre.
[edit] Origins of the opera house
John Christie obtained the use of the house in 1913 after the death of William Langham Christie, his grandfather. He came into full legal possession of the estate in 1920. Among other improvements, he added to the house an organ room, 80 feet long, in the process almost doubling the length of the south facade of the house. This room contained one of the largest organs outside of a cathedral in the country. Built by the firm of Hill, Norman & Beard Ltd (bought by Christie in 1923), it was removed and broken up, although the case and console remain.
John Christie's fondness for music led him to hold regular amateur opera evenings in this room, and it was at one of these that he met his future wife, the Sussex-born Canadian soprano Audrey Mildmay. She was a professional singer and had been engaged to add a touch of professionalism to the proceedings. During their honeymoon attending the Salzburg and Bayreuth festivals, Christie and his wife developed the idea of bringing professional opera to Glyndebourne, although Christie's original concept was for it to be similar to the Bayreuth Festival. As their ideas evolved, the concept changed to focus on smaller-scale productions of operas by Mozart which would be well suited to the intimate scale of the planned theatre.
[edit] The first theatre
As an annex to the organ room, the Christies built a fully-equipped and up-to-date theatre with a 300-seat auditorium and an orchestra pit capable to holding a symphony orchestra. Christie engaged conductor Fritz Busch as the first music director, Carl Ebert, the Intendant of Berlin's Städtische Oper was appointed artistic director, and Rudolf Bing became general manager until 1949. All three men were exiles from Nazi Germany.
After extensive rehearsals, the first six-week season opened on May 28, 1934 with a performance of Le nozze di Figaro followed by Cosi fan tutte. Boyd Neel had conducted the first music heard in the renovated Glyndebourne opera house in 1934, in private performances, at John Christie’s invitation. [1]
John Christie's original theatre was soon enlarged and improved many times after its initial construction. As early as 1936 its capacity was increased to 433; by 1952 it held nearly 600, and finally, in 1977, it held 850 people. In addition, a rehearsal hall was constructed.
Productions were interrupted by the Second World War, during which time the house became an evacuation centre for children from London. After 1945 the Festival slowly began again. Until 1951, the entire burden of financing the opera festival was undertaken by John Christie himself, but, in 1952, the Glyndebourne Festival Society was formed to take over the financial management. Christie's death in 1962 resulted in his son George (later Sir George) taking over, and additional changes and improvements to the theatre continued.
[edit] The present theatre
By the late 1980s the theatre's expansion, which had proceeded in a somewhat piecemeal fashion, included an agglomeration of outbuildings which housed restaurants, dressing rooms, storage and other facilities. It became clear to George Christie that a completely new theatre - and not just an enlargement of the old one - was necessary. Having chosen the architect Michael Hopkins in a design competition, Christie announced in 1990 that a new theatre, capable of seating 1,200 people, would be constructed in 1992.
The old theatre hosted its last festival in 1992, and construction of a brand-new theatre was underway. It was completed at a cost of some £34 million, 90 per cent of which was raised through donations, so giving the donors control over 28 per cent of the seats. The inaugural performance in the new theatre on 28 May 1994, given sixty years to the day after the old theatre’s first performance, was once again Le nozze di Figaro.
The design of the theatre, a large brick oval building, has resulted in a four-level, horseshoe-shaped auditorium with main level seating, two balconies, and a gallery topped with a circular roof. The over sixty-foot-high stage building is semi-circular in shape and allows for the efficient flying and storage of scenery.
The acoustics, by Derek Sugden and Rob Harris of Arup Acoustics, have been widely acclaimed.
[edit] See also
- Glyndebourne Festival Opera for information about the opera festival
- List of music festivals in the United Kingdom
- List of opera festivals
- List of opera houses
[edit] Notes
- ^ The Gramophone, July 1972, p. 178
[edit] References
- Allison, John (ed.), Great Opera Houses of the World, supplement to Opera Magazine, London 2003
- Beauvert, Thierry, Opera Houses of the World, The Vendome Press, New York, 1995. ISBN 0-86565-978-8
- Binney, Marcus, and Rosy Runciman, Glyndebourne - Building a Vision, London: Thames and Hudson, 1994. ISBN 0-500-27754-0
- Hughes, Spike, Glyndebourne, London: Methuen, 1965.
- Nairn, Ian; and Nikolaus Pevsner [1965]. Sussex (Buildings of England series). London: Penguin Books.
- Norwich, John Julius, Fifty Years of Glyndebourne, London: Jonathan Cape, 1985. ISBN 0-224-02310-1
- Plantamura, Carol, The Opera Lover's Guide to Europe, New York: Citadel Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8065-1842-1
- Zeitz, Karyl Lynn, Opera: the Guide to Western Europe's Great Houses, Santa Fe, New Mexico: John Muir Publications, 1991. ISBN 0-945465-81-5
[edit] External links
