Glyndebourne: The Untold History

Glyndebourne is a beautiful country house in the Sussex Downs

where I live with my wife, the opera singer Danielle de Niese.

What makes this place unique is that we also have a world-class

opera house and everything that goes with it in the gardens.

It was founded by a passionate man - my grandfather, John Christie

and his equally passionate wife, the opera singer Audrey Mildmay.

He started the Glyndebourne tradition with a love story

and it continues as one.

The most unique thing about Glyndebourne is the idea that

you have all the creative teams actually living in the house.

It really creates this hive of information and people, when

they live in close proximity,

you tend to bump into each other, idea-wise.

It's always been that way, ever since we started.

There have been strange people living in this house

ever since I can remember.

Conductors, designers, directors,

assistants, repetiteurs

and not singers.

Except me! Except Danni, of course!

Oh, there's Mr John Christie.

I'm very glad to welcome you.

He was an extraordinary man in many ways.

I mean, he was a captain in the First World War

and even though he'd he lost an eye playing rackets at school,

when he went for his medical, the doctor asked him

to cover an eye, which he duly did to read out the letters,

he then read out the letters and the doctor said,

"And now for the other eye, please."

As he simply went like that...

Fooled the doctor

and got through.

He earned a Military Cross for his courage and bravery.

He would boost the troops' morale by reading poetry to them

in the trenches.

During ceasefires, they would shoot partridges behind the line.

He would get sauces flown out from Fortnum and Mason's and they

would have slap-up meals in the trenches while they were waiting.

So I think he was a bon viveur,

but he was an inspiration to many around him.

He was passionate about music

and he was also mad about everything German,

from the clothes to the wine, and he would go round in his lederhosen.

He felt that England did not have

the same culture that Germany offered.

He loved cars and he had this wonderful old two-seater, open-topped sports car.

As a very young man, he would make trips to

the Wagner festival in Germany at a time that there were no

car ferries going across the Channel and he hired a barge

and a raft on which he'd put his car to tow him across the Channel,

which took him quite a long time, I think.

Across Europe to get to Bayreuth

to go and see Wagner, which he lapped up

and was very inspired by.

Well, after the war, he went back to Eton as a master

and then he inherited the estate at Glyndebourne,

so at that point he gave up his schoolmastering career

and he focuses attentions completely on Glyndebourne.

One of the first things that he did

was knock down a court and an old conservatory

and started building this beautiful, long room and it was

for his friend Dr Charles Harford Lloyd,

who had been the organist at Eton and was retiring

and John said to him,

"You must move to Sussex," and of course Dr Lloyd replied,

"Well, there are no good organs for me to play,"

and John said, "Fine, I'll build you one."

So he had this extraordinary room built,

which was also to satisfy his own musical interests,

and he would put on scenes from operas

and concerts in the organ room, invite his friends...

He would act and star in some of them

along with some of his friends, along with some professionals.

And this is how he met my grandmother,

who came down to sing the role of Blonde in Entfuhrung by Mozart.

His usual am-dramers weren't available, but he was

recommended the services of a young soprano from the Carl Rosa

Opera Company called Audrey Mildmay who came with a tenor colleague.

They came down, they were paid five guineas

and they were given free board and lodgings.

They came and took part in this absolutely hilarious amateur

event in the Organ Room.

The result of that was, of course, that John fell absolutely

head over heels in love with his soprano, which, when you

look at her, is not really surprising

because she was absolutely gorgeous.

He was at that time about 50, a confirmed bachelor.

Anyway, she arrived and he fell instantly in love with her,

took her upstairs, I think, and showed her his bedroom and told

her that this was where they would be sleeping when they were married!

She thought that might be a proposal, but tried to ignore it.

Indeed, she wrote a letter to him afterwards,

saying, "Please, dear John, do not fall in love with me."

But it was a bit late! He already had.

The story goes that he took her three times to Rosenkavalier,

the Royal Opera house,

and at each time

the Silver Rose was presented by Octavian

to Sophie, he proposed to her.

The first two occasions, she told him,

"I just need a little bit more time."

On the third occasion, he bought her a diamond-encrusted brooch

and she simply couldn't refuse!

And the rest is history.

They were married in June and they went to Germany of course,

to listen to opera - where else would they go?

So they came back from their honeymoon,

returned home to Glyndebourne after this wonderful

trip around Europe and John came up with the idea of extending

the Organ Room, effectively putting a stage across the end of the room.

And she famously remarked, "For God's sake, John -

"if you're going to spend all that money, do the thing properly."

So he took her advice

and built her a 300-seat barn in the Kitchen Garden of Glyndebourne.

What they wanted to do was create the festival atmosphere

that they had enjoyed in Europe in this country, to bring the standard

of performance they'd been enjoying in Europe into this country.

At that point,

all idea of amateur performances was completely cast aside.

He was very fortunate to secure two of Germany's top

directors at that time in Carl Ebert and Fritz Busch.

This was the period just before 1933 when political interference both from

the left and right was increasingly becoming a problem in Germany.

A lot of musicians were denounced in the Nazi press

and one prominent musician

was Fritz Busch, the general music director in Dresden.

Not Jewish, but the brother of Adolf Busch,

who was a very famous violinist, who was an outspoken

opponent of the Nazis and who actually left Germany in 1929.

Fritz Busch was busy working in the opera house

and stormtroopers came into the building while he was rehearsing

and tried to prevent him from carrying on the rehearsal.

He was forcibly removed from the opera house.

Adolf Busch, Fritz's brother

and leader of the Busch Quartet, was stranded in Eastbourne after

a concert and conversation turned to Glyndebourne over dinner

and the fact that Captain Christie had built this opera house

in the middle of the countryside and he was looking for a conductor.

Adolf said, "Well, you could speak to my brother, Fritz."

Christie and Busch finally met in the January of 1934 in Amsterdam

and it was a strange meeting by all accounts.

Fritz expounded at great length about his beliefs

in music, in singing, in what he wanted to achieve,

in not wanting to use big names, wanting to seek out new talents

and so on, and apparently John sat there, seemed to be asleep.

So Fritz believed.

Then he got up and went, "Yes, that was very interesting - thank you."

And left.

And Fritz was left apparently thinking, "Well,

"I don't think anything is going to come of that," and of course

a week or so later, got the letter saying, "Right - let's start."

NEWSREEL: Here, members of the cast

were discussing the score for the night's performance.

The music, too, was under the direction of

one of the original team - Dr Fritz Busch.

His influence was so very civilised and humane.

As a German,

he had the discipline

and the absolute method.

When Busch arrived at Glyndebourne,

the tables were set out

and polished, his ruler and his red pencils and even his red ink,

which, to my horror - he used to write on musical scores in red ink

to show that it was for all time.

Fritz Busch suggested this whole notion of having a producer,

which was completely alien

because there was no such role in the British opera world at the time.

Fritz Busch had worked with Carl Ebert in Berlin

and so he contacted Carl.

Carl Ebert was one of the leading figures in 1920s German theatre.

He was not Jewish, but since he was to the left,

he was regarded as a persona non grata

and when the opera house he was in... the director of was the opera house

that Goebbels took control of as the Gauleiter of Berlin,

so he was basically removed.

Carl Ebert thought the idea was completely mad, but came over

anyway to meet with John Christie and had a look at the theatre,

discovered there was no fly tower, so all the scenery changes

involved pulling everything out onto the grass outside the theatre,

but realised that what they were going to get out of this,

because they sat down the three men and talked about the budget,

they talked about what their principles were

and what they wanted to achieve and they realised

and what they wanted to achieve and they realised

they were going to get the rehearsal period they needed,

the concentration, the devotion to producing the best

possible opera and they both signed up for it.

This man's idea was a real new one.

He said, "I would like to give my country, in this specific

"kind of art, the kind of perfection which is unknown up to these days."

And he said, "I want to give my country something on my expenses."

That made me really quiet - I shut my mouth and said, "Well,

"if somebody really wants to sacrifice

"quite a fortune for this reason,

"then I have to contribute with all my strength,"

and so did my friend Fritz Busch, too.

And they revolutionised opera in this country.

And introduced a lot more drama into opera.

Before that, the singers hadn't needed to act

and there was no demand for that.

Ebert and Busch brought dramatic intensity into the operas.

The most important thing, of course, is to improvise the words.

Really feel that it's the first time she is dictating a letter,

she had only generally in mind what she wanted to say,

so let's have it again - come on.

SHE SINGS

All the visions are coming from outside,

I'm nearly haunted by visions to see how people move, what

kind of facial expression they have,

what kind of gestures they have.

I rush up and down, I make the gestures,

I time carefully the steps,

how to go in, how to go out.

The position of the singers must be to see the conductor.

Our singers have to be together,

they can see that they belong to each other.

He was in himself a natural actor,

so he could show very clearly to the artists what he wanted.

He always had great respect for the musical requirements

and Busch made sure he did. They'd speak in German together.

Carl was as good as gold.

Like all producers,

he'd try and get away with it,

but Busch was very firm about it.

Is it possible if I say we can come in a little earlier to

establish the mood before we actually start singing?

Excellent idea. And suddenly going with your cue.

Before the war, this wasn't really an operatic country.

When we had opera, it was brought in to the Royal Opera House,

Covent Garden, very short seasons.

There was a wonderful small company, the Carl Rosa,

which went around the "provinces",

but there wasn't an operatic tradition.

It was Glyndebourne really with the tutelage,

with the direction of Carl Ebert and Fritz Busch.

Glyndebourne created truly professional opera in this country.

This was Ebert's creation.

Carl Ebert and Fritz Busch basically set the tone for everything that

Glyndebourne was to become, which was not the best that we can do,

but the best that can be done anywhere, and that was John

and Audrey's motto for Glyndebourne.

Out of the initial meeting between Fritz Busch

and John Christie in Amsterdam,

they confirmed a two-week season to start on 28 May 1934, with six

performances of Le Nozze di Figaro

and six performances of Cosi Fan Tutte.

Rudolf Bing was contacted - he had worked with both Busch

and Ebert previously.

He was asked to hunt out the European continental singers

while Busch himself came over to this country

and auditioned all of the British singers, including Audrey Mildmay.

There was no assumption that because she was the boss's wife,

she was automatically going to get a role.

She had to go through the same process as everyone else.

And that's how it all began, in 1934, and she sang

the role of Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro on May 28, 1934.

The first night was sold out, pretty much, which, considering they were

charging ?2 a seat, which was a lot of money in anyone's terms -

almost overnight they achieved exactly what they had set out to do.

They had timed their performance so that people had an hour

and a half interval in the middle, they could have their dinner,

stroll in the gardens, look at the views, soak up the atmosphere

and enjoy absolute international class opera.

And the critics of the time, they went away absolutely

bemused by what they had seen.

But they all, to a man, appreciated that they had seen something

completely new and different and special.

The second night...which was the first night, of course,

only seven people came.

So the opera house itself sat just over 300, it was very,

very empty and then the reviews really hit the streets

and after that, it was sold out every single night.

So after a repertoire that was Mozart-based,

1938 saw the introduction of Don Pasquale and Macbeth

and then in 1940, they planned a repertoire that would have included

Carmen, but of course war broke out and so everything was abandoned.

Glyndebourne itself was made over as an evacuee home for

one-to-five-year-olds from the East End of London.

Immediately after the war, there were lots of plans,

John trying to find a way of getting things started again, but obviously

not having the money because the whole economic climate had changed.

Having started with Mozart at Glyndebourne, it was inevitable

that they weren't just going to stick with that one composer.

As different music directors and different artistic directors

came through the organisation, they all brought their own passions.

In 1959, Carl Ebert said he wanted to do a production

of Der Rosenkavalier as his farewell gesture to Glyndebourne for the

25th anniversary and he would then retire at the end of that season.

The atmosphere was very excited here

because they were doing their first Der Rosenkavalier with

Regine Crespin as the Marschallin and a Swedish soprano I adored,

Elizabeth Soderstrom, was singing Octavian.

It was a wonderful production.

A young man called John Cox was Professor Ebert's assistant - he's

now head of everything in the opera world, he's a very grand figure.

That was my first season here.

I always think of it as the Silver Opera

because I think of

the silver anniversary of Glyndebourne on that year.

I filmed them going round the set, planning, talking to the

designers, talking to costume makers and so on and so forth.

The atmosphere was just as it is now, very excited!

Opera is a wonderful art when it's all put together,

all the different parts of the total staging, the costumes,

the design of the singing, the orchestra.

It was his last season as artistic director.

I was in complete awe of him,

he had such an incredible reputation

and there was some absurd moment when Carl Ebert turned to me

and put a tricorn on my head.

I don't know whether he knew who I was at the time,

because I was a very mere assistant!

It was received remarkably well by the bulk of the critics,

but the Times critic wrote a rather caustic review which

so incensed John Christie that he wrote to every single

member of the audience and asked them to write to the Times.

Which they did!

All saying that the times was completely wrong and it was

beautiful and perfect and of course he was right to stand up to them!

In 1958, John Christie passed on the reins of the chairmanship

to his son George.

He'd been brought up with this opera house,

so it was almost in his blood.

My dad took over at the tender age of 23

and my grandfather died when he was 28.

MUSIC: L'incoronazione Di Poppea: Pur Ti Miro, Pur Ti Stringo

My dad, he had a tough time in the first decade or so.

The '60s were tough economically

and he had to grow Glyndebourne from its rather homespun beginnings.

The next item I'd like to discuss is the bookings for The Wild Things

at the National Theatre.

George was a businessman and he worked for the banking

foundation and was more "in the world", as it were, than his father.

But when George came, other things were happening in any case.

I mean, the world was changing - he was part of a changing world.

He was a real realist as far as Glyndebourne's finances were

concerned. It was the beginning of sponsorship in this country.

Initially, cigarette companies were helping Glyndebourne exist, um...

And he had a lot of charm and infectious enthusiasm

and was a very adept at raising funds from the corporate world.

And then as he settled into the role, as it were,

he started to flex his muscles a little bit more - there were

alterations to the repertoire and the way the seasons were structured.

We're going to move onto the next item on the agenda - the 1983 tour.

His greatest achievement in his eyes was the establishment

of the Glyndebourne Touring Opera because he was really aware

that we needed to get these productions out to a wider audience.

And if the thing doesn't work,

then my own particular livelihood is at stake in quite some degree.

So, I'm very passionate about the thing!

It may wear me down, but it's worth being worn down by passion.

It was actually originally planned in 1977 that in the 1980

season there would be a Rosenkavalier.

I was luckily placed to be the person

they wanted to direct it, but I didn't want to go mad, you know.

You know, making it totally Vienna 1900, Freud, Jung

and all that, you know, everybody is a neurotic or a political

extremist - I didn't want to do it like that.

Well, Felicity, of course, everybody thinks of Felicity now

as a Marschallin - I never thought of her as a Marschallin.

There she was, six feet tall, slim as a rake...

I loved the character of Octavian.

I'd never played a boy on stage,

so that was quite a challenge,

because I tend to drift around and obviously Octavian is much

more passionate and like a young puppy, really.

I always see it in terms of shapes because the phrases are

so beautiful and so...

I don't know, so bendy!

Not a very musical word, but it's...

sensuous and...

lilting and...

I don't know - it gives one a lot of opportunities.

MUSIC AND BIRDSONG

The '80s was a golden decade for Glyndebourne with Peter Hall

as the artistic director and Bernard Haitink as the music director.

At that stage, Glyndebourne was an 830-seat opera house -

it had grown over the years to that size.

But it was too small for the ever-increasing demand

from the audiences.

It was a cramped, hot, not-great-acoustically auditorium,

creaking at the seams.

Slowly, within the ages, it dawned on him that he was going to

have to knock down the dear old theatre and build a bigger one.

By having a bigger auditorium, and more seats to sell,

the box office potential is enhanced

and box office potential is

what's going to secure Glyndebourne's long-term existence.

And so in the late '80s, he set about fundraising.

The project was ?34 million. Not an insubstantial amount at that time.

But it also... He got his timing pretty perfect.

It was the height of the boom in the late '80s

and he took every single corporate member around a model

in the house here and enthused them with his vision for the new theatre.

And he managed to raise 75% of the funds from our corporate members

in return for a 20-year membership.

And we had a closing gala to close the curtain on the old theatre

and we managed to raise about ?1 million that night.

The bulldozers came in in August 1992

and knocked down the old theatre.

We still had about ?6 million to raise. It was a nervous moment.

We raised the money in a boom economy,

but we were very fortunate then in building the theatre in a slump.

It's reckoned, generally speaking,

that we built a 50 million pounder for 34 million.

He knew there was going to be uproar amongst all the old,

traditional audience members, and there was.

He received a lot of letters about it

when he finally did take the plunge

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, 1993.

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.

His reputation was based on symphonic music, basically.

Symphonic poems, like Don Juan

or Also Sprach Zarathustra, which everybody knows from 2001.

It begins in C major with this very basic...

..theme and C major to C minor.

No black notes,

then the introduction of black notes...

And then...

Absolutely magnificent.

He wrote two successful operas,

Elektra and Salome, which really

established Strauss's reputation as a first-rate opera composer.

Hofmannsthal is known principally as the librettist

for six of Richard Strauss's operas.

He wrote the play Elektra, which attracted Strauss's attention

and then collaborated on five more dramas with Strauss.

He was right at the heart of a creative movement

of literary modernism in Vienna

and very quickly became part of a group of young writers

called Jung Wien - Young Vienna -

who met in the Cafe Griensteidl

and he rapidly became the dominant poet of his period.

These dark and bloodthirsty two operas,

Salome and Elektra,

were in a sense popular modernism.

This was a kind of decadent, shocking modernism that was highly consumable.

Both Hofmannsthal and Strauss had ideas of wanting to do

something comic, something lighter and by the time of Rosenkavalier,

Hofmannsthal wanted to do something not so much a la mode, if you like.

It's not exactly neoclassical, but he's wanting to look

back to the 18th century, he's wanting to, as an Austrian,

he's wanting to plug in a little bit to the Austrian Catholic

sort of heritage, the cultural dramatic heritage.

So they're going back to the Mozart operas

and he's going back to French comedy, to Moliere.

Artists like Hofmannsthal, and indeed to some extent, Strauss, who

were members if you like of the high bourgeoisie, the lower aristocracy,

they, part of them,

longed for that world where everything was nicely ordered

and everyone knew where they were and where they were in the class system.

The premiere in Dresden was incredibly successful,

so much so that

they started putting on special Rosenkavalier trains to

ply between I think it was Vienna and Dresden.

Everybody came to see it and then it came to London.

It has been a smash hit ever since.

Right from the start, Rosenkavalier was rejected by some

audiences as Strauss stepping back, as a retreat from this exciting,

colourful kind of modernism of Salome and Elektra.

When it was first performed in Milan, it was actually

leafleted at the Scala - they had leaflets, the Futurists

leafleted the audience, as happens sometimes an Italian theatres.

Basically denouncing Strauss for having denied,

having absconded from the Modernist path

and written this rather aggressive work that had waltzes,

which they didn't believe were appropriate at La Scala.

You didn't have waltzes in serious operas

because that was associated with operetta.

Salome and Elektra are very advanced chromatically.

Lots of nasty noises.

There's a dissonant sound...

Turns in Rosenkavalier to...

So everybody thinks,

"Ah, he wants to be popular, sentimental", but in fact,

Rosenkavalier in my view is even more sophisticated.

It's longer and it's more symphonically cohesive.

It's a little bit like a Mahler symphony in the sense that

very disparate things - folk music,

high art, symphonic things that come from Beethoven and everything

in between - is brought together in a symphonic unity.

Strauss was interested in himself.

He was interested in the promotion of his music

and when the Nazis came to power, he saw an opportunity for himself.

Up to that point, although he was still ostensibly the most

famous composer in Germany,

he was, in a way, an old man and sort of seen as yesterday's musician.

Remember, before the First World War,

he was regarded as a great Modernist,

but by the '20s, his music

was seen as old-fashioned

and he was disregarded by the younger generation of composers.

So, he saw this opportunity

when the Nazis came to power to actually occupy the centre stage

once again and one way in which he hoped to occupy the centre stage

was by assuming a position of responsibility for the rights

of composers, something he had fought for all throughout his life.

What I mean by rights for composers is that

when works are performed,

the composers get proper royalties for those works

and so he was really agitating this and thought that

if he would be sympathetic to the new regime, he would get his way.

And he spoke very warmly about the new regime because he thought

the new regime was really interested in music and he actually said to

one friend, "Thank God we now are in a regime that's interested in music."

And so all through the first years of the Nazi period, all his actions

seem to be very much in support of the work the Nazis were doing.

He was never a party member, but at least the beginning of this stage,

he was very much demonstrating accommodation to the Nazis.

TRANSLATION FROM GERMAN

Do remember, also in '36,

he conducted at the Olympic Games in the opening ceremony.

He wrote a work called the Olympic Hymn, which he conducted.

Strauss put on an opera which was also premiered in Dresden -

Die Schweigsame Frau,

where the libretto was by the Jewish writer, Stefan Zweig.

The problem with the collaboration between

Zweig and Strauss was that Strauss was not Jewish and Zweig was,

and when the opera was premiered in 1935,

Strauss insisted that Zweig's name

appeared on the playbills, not just "comedy after Ben Jonson",

but "comedy by Stefan Zweig".

That got him into trouble with the Nazis.

I believe even Hitler was down on the list of attendees

for the opening night and as soon as Strauss began to make a fuss,

the Nazi bigwigs stayed away.

It was illegal, actually, for an Aryan to collaborate with a Jew.

They wanted to just remove his name from the playbill and when Strauss

found this out, he threatened to pull the plug on the whole thing.

And the irony is that Strauss wrote a letter to Zweig

saying that he was fed up of his job

as president of the Reichsmusikkammer.

He was only play-acting and all he was interested in was good art

and preserving good art,

and the letter was intercepted by the Gestapo

and sent directly to Hitler.

Then he was made to resign, so ironically,

although he was a representative of the German Government in '36,

he'd fallen out with the hierarchy, but they were

able to use him as a kind of puppet for their own propaganda.

The end of the Second World War,

when the Americans came into Germany and Strauss was in his villa

and he came out and he saw the American soldiers,

he immediately introduced himself to the American soldiers.

He said, "I am Richard Strauss, the composer of Der Rosenkavalier."

He said that because he knew it was his most popular opera.

I think the key to Rosenkavalier is in the three central characters.

First of all there's the Marschallin

who we see right at the beginning

of the opera enjoying a night of

passion with her lover, Octavian.

And she's somebody who is very much aware of the passing of time

and aware of the fact that Octavian will at some point become

bored with her and move on, and indeed, in Richard's production,

there's the sense that she too might become bored with him.

Octavian himself is a very interesting role that Strauss has

created. Very much in a Mozart manner,

he has created it as a trouser role. It's actually...

The character is a man,

but played by a woman and confusingly during the course of the opera,

the man, Octavian himself, dresses up as a woman,

so there's all sorts of confusion and pandemonium that results from that.

The third character is the rather sad character of Sophie,

who is just the pawn in Baron Ochs' plans to marry into money.

And she is the person who almost inevitably at the end

of the opera falls in love with Octavian and the two of them finish

the opera together, leaving the Marschallin back on her own again.

It tends to move chronologically

between the 18th century of

Maria Theresa to the period

when it was written, which is

1910 to 1912 in Vienna.

Well, I had read Zweig's The World Of Yesterday and the first third

is about people who lived in Vienna,

actually just before the Rosenkavalier was written.

You get a very strong idea of all those men being voracious readers,

voracious consumers of theatre, all intensely

hothouse plants, particularly the young Hofmannsthal,

who they all idolised.

There were some films I've found - pornography - in this period.

And was amazed how playful

and innocent the situations were in these films.

They were nearly all about class, always about masters with maids.

And it's written in the age of burgeoning psychoanalysis.

So, yes, it's a can of worms!

Richard wanted Kate to appear naked, so there's a Spanx under there

and a bra under there and then,

cos she's put seams in as if it's a garment rather than just a bodysuit.

Because it's all about the skin tone and the different textures,

so it's not REAL real,

but it looks it from the stage,

but you're not quite sure what you're looking at.

The role of the Marschallin is one of those iconic

roles for the soprano voice.

And, in all honesty, it took me a long time to say yes

and to decide that it was something I felt that I could take on.

She's a very bright and confident

and lively woman who just happens

to be in this marriage

that has forced her into this cage, really.

She is a princess, as well.

In the Austrian way, she has all sorts of different titles,

she's the field marshal's wife and she's a princess.

So she's part of the nobility and she's married of course into

ancestral wealth and estates and she has a beautiful house and lots of

servants and people come to her with petitions and all the rest of it.

So she's at the centre of a social whirl which she is to some extent

being slightly subversive of in her own lifestyle.

Well, she is the most interesting character and she does have...

She's a Christian,

but her Christianity is not beleaguered by guilt.

And she sees sex as part of nature

and she sees it as a very glorious thing.

Very well aware of her position in society,

she knows that she cannot step outside of the boundaries.

I think it's her escape, you know, having an affair

and we know that it's not just been him, there's been many before.

There'll probably be more after.

But it's her escape and her way of

expressing herself, being free and

just allowing herself some freedom

in an otherwise very strict society.

Octavian is absolutely obsessed with her, she's so lush and exciting.

This is a young guy who is really experiencing life,

he's absolutely obsessed with the Marschallin.

She's introduced him to life as a man,

so to speak, life in the bedroom.

And this is overwhelmingly exciting.

The role of Octavian was always intended to be cross cast,

so sung as a soprano played by a woman.

That means that from the perspective of the audience,

what you see is a woman pretending

to be a man, pretending to be a woman.

So I spend, let's say, at least 80% of my opera time as a boy.

It's almost the inverse of the scene in Life Of Brian

where you've got the stoning scene

and you've got men pretending to be women pretending to be men.

But, unlike in Life Of Brian, where it's always quite clear

that they are men putting on a falsetto,

in the opera,

it's always clear that it is a woman because she's singing as a soprano.

Let me tell you, to play a little boy is so much fun!

You can get so dirty, it's all really loose in your body,

none of this where ladies have to sit upright and keep their knees

together and have great posture - none of that nonsense!

Hofmannsthal certainly was interested in androgyny.

In, if you like, erotically charged same-sex relationships.

And that certainly is then present in Rosenkavalier.

Indeed, one can read the opening to the first act

as a sort of lesbian love scene.

It's a sort of safe way of looking at homoeroticism.

It's a slightly titillating

and licentious way of looking at female homoeroticism I think, yes.

The starting point is very often our music director

and what they want to do.

This summer, we have a new music director, Robin Ticciati,

and he has chosen an opera by Strauss.

I am a continuation.

I am joining a train.

The history of the place is huge and carries with it an incredibly

deep artistic belief and philosophy

and so I want to join that.

We are in the Organ Room at Glyndebourne where there have

been many rehearsals with singers and pianists

to set up an opera,

the beginnings of the opera process.

And...um...

I'm often asked what the conductor does before the orchestra comes

in an opera process.

For me, these four weeks, five weeks of just singers, director

and pianist is a way of setting up the opera and the scene.

I thought we would start in the middle of Act Two, Baron Ochs.

Baron Ochs has just found Octavian

and Sophie together.

And we're left with this noise at 133.

Just five bars of orchestra.

And there's a mixture of trombones, tuba, basset horns,

clarinets and you can hear that all immediately in the piano

and the whole thing about setting up a relationship

with the pianist in the room, it's about creating an energy whereby

the singers can imagine their character, imagine

the feeling of the pit, but four weeks before the orchestra arrive.

I mean, even in this third bar, the tuba appears -

tell me about the tuba. You spend years preparing the score.

It's a great sound, isn't it?

It's very dark...

And it all melds into...

a strong legato to...

..this extreme chord.

With the timpani.

So you're always thinking orchestrally. Yes.

The first time we did that, we played it through and then

when we were in the scene, I remember just sharing with Duncan

a little more of the tuba line and Richard said, "Ah!"

"That's the moment where just Octavian and Sophie

"could just melt back into the atmosphere

"and really feel the presence of Ochs on the scene."

Let's just play it once again with that.

And so it's the idea of creating a palette, orchestral palette,

where the singers feel completely in the world of Der Rosenkavalier.

But the first kiss, you know,

Sophie never kissed anyone before in our production and we were

really experimenting about the places where there would be stillness.

If you play just before two before 116...

Just that chord.

Just on this... Or whatever chord it is, that's the beautiful

thing about music, no-one has to know, but anyone can feel that.

I think the beautiful thing about Glyndebourne

is the fact that it never apologises for the rehearsal length.

This is what we do here.

It gives you an opportunity

to go to the heart of a piece of music.

I was very happy to make my debut here because I knew

we would have a lot of time and, for this role, we need...

For this opera, we need a lot of time.

Every opera and every important thing that we do in our life

must be done with a lot of work and determination

and this is the case with Rosenkavalier, with the rehearsal.

Every detail was worked very hard.

SHE SINGS AN EXCERPT

The role of Sophie, it's never a disappointment

when you get a perfect Sophie after

a perfect Marschallin in Act One.

With a good Sophie, you should, really,

more or less forget about the Marschallin

until she comes back in Act Three.

Sophie is her father's daughter, there's a sort of feistiness,

there's a row between father and daughter in the second act.

She backs down at the last minute

when she sees that it's affecting his health.

But she has spirit, she has feistiness.

Sophie is a very young girl,

she's 15.

She's innocent,

she is very clever

and, um...

she is looking forward to be married, which is OK.

Strauss is, um...

..a master in putting the music in the right place.

I think the role of Sophie is written in a certain way

that it makes Sophie very young.

Strauss uses the orchestra and the various sections and instruments

as vocalists, every inch as much of the singers -

they play an equal part.

First of all, the way Strauss composed operas,

he would read the libretto and when he was reading the libretto

he would put in little scraps of

melody in the side of the column, so...

At the Presentation of the Rose, in Act Two,

he would think of that, or...

Something like that.

That is to say he has little bit of themes like this...

And so forth, which he then puts on a sort of conveyor belt

of symphonic continuity,

but for that, he has to go to the beginning

and then compose through logically.

I suppose the cue for orchestral illustration

of human emotions really for Strauss

comes particularly from Wagner and the use of the orchestra

and of course the leitmotifs.

I mean, for the Marschallin, you have this extremely short motif,

you first hear it in the passage where the lower strings are sighing.

And... # Dee-da-dum... #

They're sighing away there, but it's the solo wind,

you've got the oboe and then the clarinet and then the flute going...

# Da da-dee dum

# Da da-dee dum... #

And that motif goes through 100 manifestations

of the Marschallin's countless changing moods.

Strauss knew immediately the importance of the linking,

of how motifs would link material in these operas.

Of course he uses that knowledge with his knowledge of Wagner to actually

understand how the motovic material works in Rosenkavalier.

When they're indicating a character, when they're indicating a mood,

it's understanding those small, important moments

within the score as well,

whilst managing to take that whole global approach.

Actually, the orchestra is the storyteller.

The orchestra tells everything.

You don't know your character yet? No. OK, so...

This is you.

A lot of people think Glyndebourne is just about singers

and people working on the stage.

I'm just going to raise it up and down...

But we're very lucky here that we're able to attract

some exceptional craftspeople to come and work here at Glyndebourne.

We have amazing props makers,

costume makers, stage crew,

people of all kinds of skills and crafts.

And in a way I think we add something extra

to the whole community of Sussex by bringing these very wonderful

specialists into the community here.

Often they start here commuting from London, then they love Sussex

and they come down here and stay.

We have 150 full-time posts here at Glyndebourne.

But that expands to well over 500 in the summer.

It's like a real... craft industry here,

cos everybody's so good at it and so wants to do it.

It's quite unusual to find such a level of skill.

The dye shop, the men's tailoring department, you know,

there's not one single element which doesn't work.

Richard Jones was really keen

that we didn't end up with a very 18th century

kind of look for everything.

Really high wigs or all those sort of drapes.

And also to try and allow the performers to still be themselves.

This is a smaller cut of the fleur-de-lis print

we did for the servants, which was basically a copy of the set,

but Nicky added fleur-de-lis that she'd found online

and we went to a traditional printers, locally.

So you've got random images of fleur-de-lis on top of

Paul Steinberg's design of the set, which then...

Jenny did the orange - we had an orange velvet fleur-de-lis here

and lots of different trims and tassels all in orange,

which upstairs magicked into fabulous costumes.

THEY SING IN GERMAN

I was thinking about the fact that you have so many people on stage,

but she still has to stand out.

And I had found a reference for something that was very inspiring -

this is a fashion photograph -

and it was really inspiring because it was incredibly white

and the 18th century is associated with white skin, white wigs.

And I also wanted to really zap the colour up against the white,

so it was like a really extreme contrast.

And in the end I found these 19th century seed packets

that we then took to the printers.

You know, it's really toxic colour onstage, which is absolutely spot-on.

THEY SING IN GERMAN

'It's just a lovely chance to, not to try and modernise Rosenkavalier,

'because that's impossible.

'The difficulty is with a role like that,

'it's fixed in people's minds as to what they expect.'

Some of the greatest singers have sung her and my job, I guess,

is to try to...

acknowledge that and be aware of it

but also to steer the audience in a new direction.

She's very strong and I think that perhaps in a lot of past productions

that hasn't come across so well

and she's become a bit of a victim of her own circumstance

and I really wanted to try and bring more positivity to her, really.

I think there can be an expectation that the Marschallin should be

played, by the actress, as someone who goes on to a sort of

default setting of... depression and dignity.

And I've...

..tried to work against that slightly.

'It was an interesting process trying to find what drives her.'

'She's very well aware of her position in society.

'She knows that she cannot step outside of the boundaries,'

so she's coming to terms with that in the piece,

coming to terms with her role and how she can fulfil that

but still be happy, still be a happy human being.

And she is not an old woman. She's still beautiful, she's still young.

But she is feeling the ageing process

and the specific situation with Octavian being a younger lover,

and later, Sophie the girl he falls in love with,

leads her to reflect on the larger issues of time and impermanence.

Marschallin is Hofmannsthal's mouthpiece for this sense of -

das Gleitende, he called it -

where everything is in flux.

The Marschallin is a middle-aged woman

having an affair with a young man of 17.

'And effectively trying to stop the clocks by doing it.'

'The libretto is shot through with endless references

'to the present, the past, the future.'

When she talks to Octavian, she says,

"It's going to be heute oder morgen - today or tomorrow."

Time is such an important part of...

Well, the Marschallin talks about it and talks about

sometimes she gets up and stops all the clocks.

She can't believe how time...

You're in it and then all of a sudden it just slips away

through your fingers and...

Like sand running through a timer, you know?

The text is so, so wonderful, the Hofmannsthal text.

Absolutely extraordinary. And I think...

Strauss' music is glorious

but the text is so...relevant to everybody, really.

I think everyone can identify with the Marschallin, who says,

"How can it be that...

"that I was the young girl and I shall be the old woman,

"and I'm still the same?"

Oh.

Gets me every time when I say that because it's obvious,

absolutely obvious, but so true. And you don't...

You don't realise it.

I think when you're young you think you're going to grow up

or you're going to grow old, but inside you're just the same,

it's just everybody else...

SHE LAUGHS

REPORTER: After rehearsal,

the cast could relax in the lovely grounds, which are as much a part

of a Glyndebourne festival as the performances themselves.

We live in an artistic commune here, really.

I mean, the house is filled with people

who are involved with the operas.

That's not something you see in every opera house.

I think that really promotes a very high level of creativity.

Cos when you're happy you can create.

When I first came here, people asked me, "Where are you working?"

And I'd say, and they'd say "Where's that? What does it do? Really?"

"Sussex? An opera company? No, you're kidding."

When I think of what I learned down here - learned to drive,

I learned to swim.

All kinds of things. You were here and that was it.

Great parties, amazing parties. Especially with the chorus.

But... It was a life. It was a way of life.

I enjoyed very much this opera house.

What is very beautiful after the rehearsing - the rehearsal -

you can go out and see the sheep...

..beautiful nature... It's just wonderful.

It's like a little piece of heaven.

Got these wonderful gardens to walk in, there's fresh air,

you've time to let your head relax.

You have countryside and you have the sheep.

I remember when I first came to Glyndebourne,

the first thing I remember were the sheep in the fields.

It's a bit like planet opera and that can become quite oppressive.

It's a little opera bubble, you know? And it's wonderful.

You know, if you were in London it's a little different.

You might be working in the morning

and a bit in the afternoon

and then you're somewhere else, in a different world, in a sense.

Well, when you're living at Glyndebourne, this doesn't happen.

I mean, I live in South London and you can sort of long for

the trains to draw in at the junction on Vauxhall

just so that you can smell the streets.

It's very peaceful but then when you go inside to Glyndebourne, you're

working with the music and I just think it's really nice to have both.

You can want to run away, yeah.

REPORTER: By the croquet lawn, Mr Harvey, the head gardener, trims

the flowers in the white border he's designed for this year's display.

'People always think this idea of presenting a silver rose

'to the daughter's nobility

'is a long-established Viennese tradition.'

Hofmannsthal made it up.

He based it on the papal tradition of the church, the Pope,

presenting a golden rose to the daughters of the nobility.

And, of course, when Octavian arrives, Strauss gives him

a great operatic set piece,

which we sit back and think, "This is wonderful."

But, of course, as Adorno, the great Marxist critic said,

"What is the offer? It's merely a fake rose."

It's not a real one at all, it's a silver rose, it's a fake.

And, of course, it is an incredibly poetic idea.

I mean, people are manufacturing silver roses for people

who love Rosenkavalier, you know, because it's such a beautiful thing.

'One of the things I love most is the presentation of the rose because'

Richard has done this extraordinary thing of slightly refocusing

that particular scene, so the moment and the beginning

when Sophie and Octavian usually fall in love with each other,

when they're stammering and stuttering their lines out,

actually becomes a little piece of artifice of the sort of ceremony

they're going through,

where they actually had to be prompted to say those lines.

But then when they really do fall in love,

the choreography of this moment where the two of them are just rocking

gently from side to side, I think, is just so beautiful and so touching.

'The presentation of the rose is Octavian's key,

'which is F-sharp major.'

And G-major, which is Sophie's key

Coming together...

F-major. And so forth.

Sophie and he are perfectly aware that it's an artificial rose -

it's been made, as the music is being made.

The point is that there has to be,

though, an emotional unity between all the characters.

And Hofmannsthal, when he wrote this marvellous,

short summary of Rosenkavalier,

he comes up with a phrase at the end - "Eintracht der Lebendigen,"

the unity of everybody living.

Octavian is the glue between Ochs and the Countess, for example,

and he comes together with Sophie,

and all of the characters on the stage,

right down to the serving maids and so forth -

they are together in this wonderful unity.

'Everybody...

'depends on each other to have any kind of future.'

In any kind of good existence, we all must depend on each other.

And Richard's made that exceptionally clear.

Yeah, it's a very delicate, lovely piece but, actually, is quite heavy

and quite strong and probably could cause someone some kind of anguish.

'Rosenkavalier is the opening production of the 2014 season

'and it's just one of six productions and 76 performances

'we're doing at Glyndebourne this summer.'

REPORTER: At Victoria Station in the middle of the afternoon it is unusual

to see one's fellow travellers in evening dress.

But the train for Glyndebourne leaves at 3:45,

so as to be in time for the evening performance.

John Christie wanted people to dress in evening dress

to respect the artists. He said, "The artists have made an effort

"and we as audience members should make an effort."

Mother's coming by car.

Mm. Father told me.

The first night of the season is the reopening of the theatre

that has been closed for several months.

So there's a huge amount of preparation that is needed

just to start the festival off again each year.

I suppose we're one of those organisations where we want

everything to appear very smooth

and there's a lot of paddling that goes on underneath.

So first night's completely nerve-racking for everybody here,

not just the artists on the stage,

but actually let's not forget the people working front of house.

I will be over there and when I give clearance to the stage manager

to say we're ready, I will cue the doors to close on that side.

So you all just need to keep an eye on those doors.

And as soon as that one closes, everybody just follow suit.

OK? Great.

And is there anything anybody wants to ask me, tell me? Say?

MAN: We haven't had any payslips for the last week.

No payslips for last week? OK. We were paid...

You were paid, that's the main thing.

REPORTER: Outside the station,

a number of coaches stand by to take the London audience

to the Sussex opera house, in time for the evening performance.

Follow that bus. Glyndebourne? Right, sir.

It's incredibly important that people come here

and have a great experience when they arrive here.

And Jules is one of those remarkable people who cares

passionately about how people feel when they're here and has

extraordinary levels of customer service, which we're very proud of.

The audience come off the train, get onto the bus,

and they get brought up to Glyndebourne

and at the end of the evening they're taken back to Lewes Station.

This is our coach park and it's also for chauffeurs.

You can walk wherever you want to

and you can bring whatever you want to for a picnic.

We see lots of people here with very lavish picnics. You can come here

with your sandwiches from Marks Spencer if you want to.

And I've done that myself in the past before I worked here

and it's a very easy way and relaxed way of spending the interval.

And indeed, if you have a simple picnic,

you've got even more time to walk around the grounds.

It's a perfect Glyndebourne day - hot and sunny.

A lot of our audience go to the restaurants

but some people bring their own picnics.

And people have their favourite spots as well, so they try and get here

as early as they can to grab their favourite place.

The shows start quite early, so it's very light,

it's sunny outside and the audiences are there,

you can hear the audience having their picnic

and doing all of that stuff.

So it is quite hard to focus.

What I'm interested in is value for money.

I've been here once before and that was six years ago.

I've been saving up to come back again and tonight's the night.

Look, the first thing to say is that opera is a very expensive art form,

wherever it's put on, Glyndebourne or anywhere else.

I think people often don't do the maths

when they go to an opera performance and realise that, you know,

take this Rosenkavalier, there are 70 people in the pit

playing in the LPO, there's a chorus of 30,

there's another 15-odd principals, there's probably six actors,

and there's always people backstage.

Did you want to go in today? Is it one or two? Just for me.

Yes, I think I've got one for you.

Being a conductor, you probably like to be over the pit.

PA SYSTEM: Mr Ticciati, Mr Ticciati, this is your call.

Thankfully, I'm not singing.

BELL RINGS Ah, the bell.

Now for your initiation. Perhaps we'll see you in the interval.

BELL RINGS

First bell.

Blue circle, box G.

Quickest way is just to go straight ahead there, up to the next level.

OK.

He's just gone...I mean, he'll be back in a second. OK. That's fine.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

You guys don't have a Swish Car, do you?

Jules...

I'm so sorry.

INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER

OK, all the doors are closed now.

APPLAUSE

OPERATIC MUSIC BEGINS

A Broadway show doctor says, "Always put in an amazing 11 o'clock number."

And, of course, it's got the best 11 o'clock number of all shows

in the form of this trio between these three women.

THEY SING IN GERMAN

'Which is launched by the Marschallin'

in this incredibly taxing opening phrase.

It's just so iconic and everyone's waiting for that line.

'It is one of the only moments where we just stand and sing.'

SHE SINGS IN GERMAN

'But then, of course, Sophie dovetails with her

'and at times goes above her.'

'Strauss just pulls it all together

'and produces this extraordinary, affecting moment.'

THEY SING IN GERMAN

'And the way he blends the three voices together in that trio

'is so beautiful.'

'The female voices shamelessly consume you.'

'And they're always rising phrases and climaxes'

and it goes on and up and up.

I'm not very articulate about describing music, I just...

I just love it and it seems absolutely...

..right and perfect to me for what he's describing.

THEY SING IN GERMAN

'The Marschallin is engaging in a soliloquy with us

'of remembering things she said in the first act -'

' "I've got to give up this boy,"

' "He's got to go off with this beautiful girl and they're going to

' "marry and I've got to realise that I'm getting older."

'So, in a sense, it is through her eyes.'

It is the farewell to an older world.

And she realises that she has got to move into a new kind of life.

THEY SING IN GERMAN

'I had to really think carefully about how I was going to not allow

'that to affect me and not allow yourself to get

'too emotionally involved, personally involved.'

And that's something which, as a singer,

is crucial because if you let yourself go,

emotionally, you can't sing, you know?

And nobody wants to see a weeping soprano

struggling their way through the trio of Rosenkavalier.

THEY SING IN GERMAN

'Strauss, he understood very well a woman's soul.

The feeling of a young woman like Sophie.

The feeling of an older woman like the Marschallin.

'Octavian, he is in such a difficult position.'

THEY SING IN GERMAN

'He's not over the Marschallin but he has to let her go.

'And he knows she's going to walk out that door,'

he knows his heart will break, yet he knows that the possible

love of his life is just standing on the other side of the room.

So torn. And he sees that both the women are torn.

He's hurt both of them.

And he can't help both of them.

And it's just this emotional roller coaster

with the most incredible music.

The most incredible music.

SHE SINGS IN GERMAN

'And it was the music that was played at Strauss' funeral.'

Where all where all the sopranos fell out, one by one,

cos they were all in tears.

It's wonderfully appropriate this season is dedicated to George.

Rosenkavalier, it was our 25th anniversary production,

it's here in our 80th year.

It was one of his favourite operas.

He was listening to the music the night before he died.

And I just think it's magical.

I will miss him for his choice of repertoire, directors.

He always had something to say about it.

He knew more about opera than anyone I know.

And I will miss him and his wisdom.

APPLAUSE

I hope in 80 years from now people will be looking back and saying,

"It hasn't changed very much."

Because although we innovate and we find new ways of doing things,

the core of Glyndebourne has always been exactly the same.

And I often think,

"What would John Christie think now if he looked at Glyndebourne?"

And I think he would say,

"That's great, they're still doing fantastic work.

"They're still giving their audiences an amazing experience.

"They're still looking after young artists."

Which was very important to him.

But the thing I think he would be really surprised about would be

the range and breadth of what we're doing.

And I hope he would be absolutely thrilled we're reaching

a vast audience that in 1934 he could never even have dreamt of.