Glyndebourne: The Untold History Page #4

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and decide to go for it.

But it was absolutely

the right thing to do.

The building was built on time

and on budget.

We won all sorts of awards

for the architecture, the brickwork,

the concrete work, the woodwork.

And we only missed one season,

We opened on May 28, 1994

with another new production

of The Marriage of Figaro,

exactly 60 years after

the first night in 1934.

Opera enthusiasts flocked to

Glyndebourne in Sussex

this evening for the gala opening

of the new opera house.

CORKS POP:

Champagne, opera and a picnic

on the lawn between the acts.

Glyndebourne has been part

of the English social scene

for 60 years, perhaps the world's

most exclusive opera house.

Tonight, the rich and famous,

but mostly the rich,

came to christen

the new opera house.

You paid for this new theatre

and for this...

..Glyndebourne and the whole

world of opera has a huge debt...

..of monumental proportions

owing to you.

What he did was to take his father's

dream and turn it into a much

bigger dream, which is

called New Glyndebourne.

He had the intelligence,

the drive to force a new opera

house into existence where it would

have been easy to say, "We'll just

go on improving the old one."

People don't want to lose the old

one, but this new house is

a totally different level of sound,

technical quality from the old one.

That's George's achievement -

he's going to leave behind

a great opera house.

And now I think they've probably

all forgotten about the old theatre

and we're now 20 years into this

new theatre

and it is holding up extremely well.

I think we first put Rosenkavalier

into the planning

about four years ago.

There'd been a little bit of a

dearth of Strauss at Glyndebourne,

so we scheduled a new production

of Ariadne, which appeared last year,

and Rosenkavalier in 2014.

It's lovely for me,

because actually I saw the last

production of Rosenkavalier -

amazingly, I managed to get

a dress rehearsal ticket

when I suppose I was in my 20s.

I remember seeing that and

those amazing costumes by Erte.

And it's wonderful now to see

this piece with a very different

but equally brilliant

creative team behind it.

One of the things that's special

about this production is the three

leading characters in it -

the Marschallin, Octavian and Sophie,

all those three singers are singing

their roles for the first time.

And that makes it a very special

experience, not only for us,

but all of them.

I think Glyndebourne has always

been about encouraging young artists.

It's never been particularly

about having established

international stars.

I hope it will give singers

their first opportunities here,

at whatever stage it is

in their career.

Singers like Anna Rajah are at a

different stage of their career.

She is a tremendously talented young

artist and I hope will return

to Glyndebourne in a

principal role in the future.

I live in digs, places that

Glyndebourne organised near Lewes.

The bus is really close,

so every morning it's two minutes

for the bus and I'm here.

This is my first professional job,

which I'm thrilled about.

I remember being at music college

and people talking about,

"Glyndebourne, Glyndebourne,

Glyndebourne."

I really wanted to see this place

and be part of it.

So when my agent told me

that I had an audition with them,

I was absolutely thrilled.

So we'll have choristers this summer

who are having their first

professional engagement,

but we'll have other,

more established singers, singing

roles for the first time.

I travel from London by train.

And then I get met at Lewes

station by a lovely minibus which

takes me into the countryside.

That takes me to work, so it's a

pretty nice commute, I have to say.

Kate Royal is almost a classic

Glyndebourne story.

She came out of the Guildhall just

over ten years ago,

she sang in our chorus in 2003.

She understudied Pamina

in the Magic Flute the next year.

Glyndebourne was my first

professional job.

I went to join the Glyndebourne

chorus, which is something that a

lot of the singers do,

and I was given an understudy,

which was Pamina, and I got to

go on and perform the role twice,

so that was jumping in

at the deep end.

And some critics were in that night

and it just, from then on,

I had a career!

She's had a trajectory

at Glyndebourne which has gone

right from starting in the chorus

to this wonderful role

in Rosenkavalier, which she's singing

for the first time at Glyndebourne.

Tara is an extremely special

performer and we've known Tara

since 2010,

when she came here to sing the small

role of the Sandman in

Hansel and Gretel.

Since that time,

she's had a huge career and is now

one of the most exciting young

mezzo sopranos in

international opera.

I stay in Lewes.

It's a gift to be able to

walk from your little house

across the Downs

and down to Glyndebourne!

You can take a walk like this

every morning.

You're out here in the air,

there's the animals, I mean,

when we started at rehearsals

here, it was lambing season.

It was the most incredible thing

to see every morning.

So you're not only

waking up the body,

but you're waking up your senses.

It's fab.

I mean, I had no idea...

You know, if you think about it,

there is no other opera house

like this. It's really like

a little dream.

I remember first seeing

the sign "Glyndebourne"

and thinking to myself, "Wow, I

can't believe I'm actually here!"

MUSIC:
"Also Sprach Zarathustra" from

Don Juan Op.20 by Richard Strauss

I started on this one about

three years ago.

I was directing something in New York

and I spent the first three weeks

that I was there

on finalising the design for this.

Um...

But the designer, Paul Steinberg,

had come to London a few times.

I'd wanted some sort of set

that did actually express the wealth

of anachronism that's in this.

There's 19th-century Strauss

waltzes in it.

I love the three different societies

it moves through.

Palace aristocracy...

bourgeois life...

new money.

And lowlife.

This is a very olfactory piece,

as well, Der Rosenkavalier.

There's lots of stuff

about smell in it.

But we tried when we designed it

to feel that each set provoked

a sense of smell.

I mean, we don't pump smells

out into the audience or anything

scary like that.

First act's like...

That's a very exclusive smell.

Very luxurious smell.

Second act is Faninal's Palace.

That could smell of new chair

or new car.

Or kind of the smell you might

have in a room where

the air conditioning is on too cold.

And the third act,

sort of...

that's a bad smell. That's...

er...

mouldy carpet...

I won't say... What was the other?

Oh, ha!

You can't say that

on television in a documentary

about Der Rosenkavalier!

That the third act

should smell of urine!

Strauss, by the age of 29,

was already the most famous

composer in the world before he even

started writing operas and also the

most famous conductor in the world.

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