Glyndebourne: A Short History

By Michael Kennedy and Julia Aries

This concise history tells the fascinating story of how three generations of the Christie family have grown a small opera house in the South Downs into an internationally acclaimed Festival and Tour, reflecting founder John Christie's insistence on doing 'not the best we can do but the best that can be done anywhere'. Today Glyndebourne is a 12-month operation, presenting more than 120 performances each year in the theatre, as well as cinema screenings, free online streamings and award-winning educational output. Illustrated with images from Glyndebourne's archive, this is an affectionate portrait of one of the most influential music institutions in Britain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jun 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781784424237

Michael Kennedy

Author of the #1 NEW RELEASE in Office Management, HR REMOTELY, Michael Kennedy is the Founder and CEO of Capitol Management LLC, an HR consulting firm whose mission is to help small businesses and startups with all their Human Resources needs.As HR Director for several e-commerce companies, Michael has managed remote teams across 10 countries. He graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management and is a Paralegal specializing in contract law.Follow us on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/capitol-management-llcVisit our website capitolmanager.com

Book preview

AUTHORS’ NOTES

This is a short history of the miracle that is Glyndebourne. Miracle, you say. Well, read the first two chapters. The problem in writing it has been not what to include but what to leave out. I would like to have mentioned many more of the staff past and present, many more of the conductors and singers. I would like to have described more of the productions. I would like to have told more anecdotes, such as Fritz Busch’s remark in 1935: ‘No stars are ever away at Glyndebourne, because even work is more attractive than the night life of Lewes’. And John Pritchard’s quip on hearing that the operatically inexperienced Bernard Haitink was to succeed him as music director: ‘I didn’t know Brahms had written an opera’. Fortunately Glyndebourne can already boast an impressive bibliography, to which those who wish for more detail can turn. All writers about Glyndebourne are in some way indebted to the authors who have tackled the subject before; and my thanks also go to Sir George Christie, Joanna Townsend, Julia Aries and Helen O’Neill.

M.K. 2010

Forcing a quart into a pint pot is never an easy matter. I am indebted to Michael Kennedy for giving us such a concise rendering of the Glyndebourne saga, and to all those at Glyndebourne who have read and commented upon my updating of the tale. Thanks go especially to Karen Anderson for her unstinting support.

J.A. 2019

CONTENTS

‘DO THE THING PROPERLY’

BRICKS AND MORTAR AND ROSES

DREAM BECOMES REALITY

POST-WAR CHANGE

GEORGE AND MARY

HAITINK AND DAVIS

THE NEW THEATRE

YOUTH AT THE HELM

RECENT YEARS

AUDIENCES: OLD AND NEW

THE FUTURE

An aerial view of Glyndebourne house and theatre, spring 2019. Glyndebourne house, seen on the left of the site, is dwarfed by the 25-year-old theatre.

‘DO THE THING PROPERLY’

‘GLYNDEBOURNE, AN ENGLISH opera house near Lewes in East Sussex.’ This Oxford Dictionary of Music entry is prosaically accurate but conveys nothing of the special and magical thrill that the name Glyndebourne holds for everyone who has attended opera there since 1934. Opera at Glyndebourne remains a unique experience, to be enjoyed from mid-May to the end of August and for three weeks in the autumn when the Tour occupies the theatre before taking three operas around the country and often further afield.

What makes Glyndebourne unique is that it remains a family’s private home in which one feels more like a guest than a patron. Nowhere else offers international musical standards in such pleasing surroundings – a beautiful estate in the heart of the South Downs National Park, with gardens, lawns, lake, and facilities for dining or picnicking in the 90-minute interval. The superb opera house is the second on the site in 75 years. What must have seemed to be a madcap folly in 1934 has become a world-famous guarantee of quality.

We owe all this to the money, determination, vision and eccentricity of John Christie and to the professionalism, tact and wisdom of his wife, the soprano Audrey Mildmay. After them came their son George and his wife Mary, who took Glyndebourne into a new era and who in turn handed over to their son Augustus (Gus).

There has been a manor house at Glynde Bourne, as it was often spelt, since the 15th century and the Hay family owned it until the Christies came on the scene in the late 18th century (the name was originally Swiss, Christin). John Christie was born in Eggesford, Devon, on 14 December 1882, the only child of Augustus Langham Christie and Lady Rosamond Wallop, daughter of the fifth Earl of Portsmouth. (Eggesford was her father’s house.) Augustus’ father William used Glyndebourne as his home, and John spent his childhood and early youth at Tapeley Park, a Christie property in Devon used by Augustus.

Watercolour of Glyndebourne, c. 1756. The original 15th century house is almost hidden behind the imposing addition made by John Hay in the late 17th century.

John was sent to boarding school at the age of six, and then to Eton in 1896, where he was put in the army class to further his interest in science. At 16 he passed into the military academy at Woolwich. This, however, proved to be a short-lived career after an injury to his foot in a riding accident left him slightly lame, but it did enable him to sit and pass the entrance examination for Trinity College, Cambridge, to study physics and natural science. Despite his foot, and a subsequent injury to an eye in which he later lost the sight, he loved football, and later played tennis, cricket and became a first-class shot. He always had a keen, if rather unconventional, sense of fun.

On taking his degree, he returned to Eton in 1906 as an assistant master to teach science. Then, in 1914,