Glyndebourne
Encyclopedia
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- This article is about the country house and its opera houseOpera houseAn opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building...
. See Glyndebourne Festival OperaGlyndebourne Festival OperaGlyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
for the summer opera festival.
- This article is about the country house and its opera house
Glyndebourne (icon) is a country house, thought to be about six hundred years old, located near Lewes
Lewes
Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town...
in East Sussex
East Sussex
East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent, Surrey and West Sussex, and to the south by the English Channel.-History:...
, England. It is also the site of an opera house
Opera house
An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building...
which, with the exception of its closing during the Second World War, for a few immediate post-war years, and in 1993 during the construction of the new theatre, has been the venue of the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
since 1934.
History of the house
"There had been a manor house at Glynde Bourne (as it was often spelt) since the fifteenth century", but the exact age of the house is unknown. Some surviving timber framingTimber framing
Timber framing , or half-timbering, also called in North America "post-and-beam" construction, is the method of creating structures using heavy squared off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden pegs . It is commonplace in large barns...
and pre-Elizabethan panelling
Panelling
Panelling is a wall covering constructed from rigid or semi-rigid components. These are traditionally interlocking wood, but could be plastic or other materials....
makes an early sixteenth-century date the most likely. In 1618, it came into the possession of the Hay family, passing to James Hay Langham in 1824. He inherited his father's baronetcy and estate in Northamptonshire in 1833 which under the terms of his inheritance should have led to him relinquishing Glyndebourne, but as a lunatic he was unable to do so. After litigation the estate passed to a relative, Mr Langham Christie, but he later had to pay £50,000 to persuade another relative to withdraw a rival claim.
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
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
, while ornate stonework and balustrading
Baluster
A baluster is a moulded shaft, square or of lathe-turned form, one of various forms of spindle in woodwork, made of stone or wood and sometimes of metal, standing on a unifying footing, and supporting the coping of a parapet or the handrail of a staircase. Multiplied in this way, they form a...
was added. Then, in 1876, the architect Ewan Christian
Ewan Christian
Ewan Christian was a British architect. He is most notable for the restoration of Carlisle Cathedral, the alterations to Christ Church, Spitalfields in 1866, and the extension to the National Gallery that created the National Portrait Gallery. He was architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners...
was engaged to install bay windows and add decorative brickwork to give the house the Jacobethan
Jacobethan
Jacobethan is the style designation coined in 1933 by John Betjeman to describe the mixed national Renaissance revival style that was made popular in England from the late 1820s, which derived most of its inspiration and its repertory from the English Renaissance , with elements of Elizabethan and...
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
Driveway
A driveway is a type of private road for local access to one or a small group of structures, and is owned and maintained by an individual or group....
next to the theatre.
Origins of the opera house
John ChristieJohn Christie (Glyndebourne)
John Christie, CH, MC was an English landowner and producer. He was the founder of the Glyndebourne Opera House and the Glyndebourne Festival Opera at his home at Glyndebourne, near Lewes in Sussex in 1934....
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 (24.4 m) 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
Cathedral
A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...
in the country. It was built by the firm of Hill, Norman & Beard Ltd (bought by Christie in 1923); after the Second World War John Christie made a gift of sections of the soundboards, pipes and structural parts to the rebuilt Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks
Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks
The Royal Military Chapel, St. James Park, known as the Guards Chapel, is the religious home of the Household Division at the Wellington Barracks in London. Built in 1838, the chapel was bombed during the Blitz in 1940/1941....
(which had been destroyed in the blitz); the case and console remain at Glyndebourne.
John Christie's fondness for music led him to hold regular amateur opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
evenings in this room, and it was at one of these in 1931 that he met his future wife, the Sussex-born Canadian soprano Audrey Mildmay, a singer with the Carl Rosa Opera company who had been engaged to add a touch of professionalism to the proceedings. They were married on 4 June 1931 and during their honeymoon attending the Salzburg
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
and Bayreuth
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
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.
The first theatre
Auditorium
An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances at venues such as theatres. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens.- Etymology :...
and an orchestra pit
Orchestra pit
An orchestra pit is the area in a theater in which musicians perform. Orchestral pits are utilized in forms of theatre that require music or in cases when incidental music is required...
capable of holding a symphony orchestra.
Christie engaged conductor Fritz Busch
Fritz Busch
Fritz Busch was a German conductor.Busch was born in Siegen, Province of Westphalia. He held posts conducting opera at Aachen, Stuttgart and Dresden. In 1933 he was dismissed from his post at Dresden because of his opposition to the new Nazi government of Germany...
as the first music director, Carl Ebert
Carl Ebert
Carl Ebert was a German theatre and opera producer and administrator.-Biography:He worked as an actor and theatre director in Germany from 1915 to 1927, directing Brecht's In The Jungle of Cities in Darmstadt in 1927...
, the Intendant of Berlin's Städtische Oper
Deutsche Oper Berlin
The Deutsche Oper Berlin is an opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Germany. The resident building is also home to the Berlin State Ballet.-History:...
was appointed artistic director, and Rudolf Bing became general manager until 1949. All three men were exiles from Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
After extensive rehearsals, the first six-week season opened on 28 May 1934 with a performance of Le nozze di Figaro followed by Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
. Boyd Neel
Boyd Neel
Louis Boyd Neel was an English conductor and academic. He is perhaps best known for revitalizing the genre of the chamber orchestra.-Early years:...
had conducted the first music heard in the renovated Glyndebourne opera house in 1934, in private performances, at John Christie
John Christie (Glyndebourne)
John Christie, CH, MC was an English landowner and producer. He was the founder of the Glyndebourne Opera House and the Glyndebourne Festival Opera at his home at Glyndebourne, near Lewes in Sussex in 1934....
's invitation.
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.
The present theatre
Hopkins Architects
Hopkins Architects Partnership LLP is a prominent British architectural firm established in 1976 by Sir Michael and Lady Patricia Hopkins. The practice has won many awards for its work and has twice been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, including in 2011 for the 2012 London Velodrome and in...
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 under way. 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.
Sales of festival tickets have always been high, but in the 2011 season a new record was set with 99.3 percent of all tickets sold. In the same season, two operas were relayed live online via The Guardians website, reaching 40,000 viewers worldwide.
Education
Since its establishment in 1986, Glyndebourne's Education department has undertaken an array of projects within the local community. Schools around the SussexSussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
and Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
area often visit the venue for performances and workshops. Youth opera projects are also undertaken such as the recent production of Knight Crew for 14-19 year olds and the previous Hip H'Opera project in 2006 - timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. The department has also worked with HMP Lewes since 1988 in projects such as inmate-designed puppet shows influenced by works such as Verdi's Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
.
Wind turbine
Glyndebourne have obtained planning permission to erect a wind turbine on Mill Plain , 400m from the opera house.The turbine will be a tubular tower 44m high and a three bladed rotor with a diameter of 52m. It will have an overall height to blade tip of 70m, about half as high as Heathfield Television Mast, a few miles away. The base diameter will be about 3m. The turbine is likely to be pale grey with a semi-matt finish. Construction of the turbine would take place over four months. The estimated cost is £750,000. The turbine will generate 850 kW. This is sufficient, over the whole year, to meet Glyndebourne's electricity demands.
The site has been used for windmills for many years. A post-mill, erected in 1706, was used until 1921, but collapsed in 1925, and the trestle timbers were blown down in 1964.
Glyndebourne applied for planning permission to Lewes District Council in January 2007. The council granted permission in July 2007, but the decision was called in by the Secretary of State because of the wider implications of the proposal for renewable energy development in the South Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and strong opposition from countryside protection groups and local residents. On 10 July 2008 the Secretary of State granted planning permission.
In 2008-9 Glyndebourne erected a temporary 50m mast on Mill Plain to monitor meteorological conditions for a year, prior to erection of the turbine. The data collected showed lower wind levels than had been predicted at this location, perhaps because 2008-9 had lower wind levels than usual.