glyndebourneopera

Peggy Reynolds explores Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. With expert insights from the conductor, Sir Mark Elder, who argues that Don Pasquale is “a brilliant refilling of an old mould”. From Francesco Izzo, Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Southampton, who sets the opera into the wider historical context of the development of opera buffa, arguing that Don Pasquale was a new kind of comic opera, one which treats its characters with great empathy and warmth. From Glyndeb...

Peggy Reynolds provides a historical and musical introduction to one of the great works of French Baroque opera, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie. We hear from Jeanice Brooks, Professor of Music at the University of Southampton, who identifies Rameau as an almost exact contemporary of Handel and Bach, who started his musical career as an organist and theorist and went on to stage lavish operas for Louis XV as ‘Compositeur du Cabinet du Roi’. ...

Peggy Reynolds explores Giuseppe Verdi’s last, great work: the comic opera Falstaff. With contributions from the conductor Sir Mark Elder, who celebrates the delicacy, wit and humanity of Verdi’s score. From Glyndebourne’s dramaturg, Cori Ellison, who reflects on the quicksilver pace of this wonderfully funny work by a composer who we do not tend to associate with comedy. And from the baritone Laurent Naouri, who discusses the role of Falstaff, and the words and mus...

Ariadne auf Naxos brings together the ‘high art’ of opera seria and the lighter, comic entertainment of the commedia dell’arte. Peggy Reynolds provides a historical and musical introduction to this ambitious, witty and intricately crafted collaboration between Richard Strauss and his librettist, the poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. With contributions from the writer and broadcaster David Nice, who provides expert insight into Strauss’s use of the orchestra ...

Peggy Reynolds gives an introduction to two of the early twentieth century’s most intriguing operas, Maurice Ravel’s L’heure Espagnole and L’enfant et les Sortileges. General Director of Glyndebourne David Pickard praises Ravel’s mastery of orchestration and the unique soundworlds he creates in these two fascinating works. Richard Langham Smith, Research Professor at the Royal College of Music, explores the operatic farce of L’heure Espagnole and consider...

A guide to the theatrical and musical history of one of the earliest English operas, Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, with music from the live recording of our 2009 production. Presenter Peggy Reynolds considers the nature of the semi-opera and its origins in theatre, song, orchestral music and masque, and explores the historical and political context of the opera, which was first performed just a few years after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. With expert insights from Professor L...

Peggy Reynolds provides an introduction to one of the world’s most loved and performed operas – Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème. With expert insights from Conductor Kirill Karabits, musicologist and cultural historian Alexandra Wilson, the General Director of Glyndebourne David Pickard, Head of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, Julian Johnson and the soprano Irina Iordachescu. [Producer: Mair Bosworth] Musical ext...

A guide to Glyndebourne’s signature opera, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, with music from the live recording of our 1962 production. Presenter Peggy Reynolds explores the historical context of the opera, the politics behind its humour, and Mozart’s sublime music of rage and forgiveness. With contributions from Conductor Jane Glover, General Director of Glyndebourne David Pickard, Head of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, Julian Johnso...

Deborah Bell’s sculpture Artemis is installed near the Ha-Ha at Glyndebourne in May 2012 as part of our Art and Sculpture at Glyndebourne for the 2012 Festival. Deborah Bell is a leading South African painter and sculptor whose work is created in dialogue with multiple worlds, texts, histories and consciousnesses. She is also widely known for her collaborative projects with William Kentridge and Robert Hodgins.

Rossini’s music has an irrepressible quality, bubbling up effortlessly throughout this retelling of the story of Cinderella. The invention is unstoppable, from Cenerentola’s plaintive song about a king who loves a poor girl to the lavish coloratura of her final aria when goodness triumphs and all ends, for some at any rate, happily ever after. When this production, directed by Peter Hall, was first seen in 2005, Opera magazine credited it as ‘thoughtful, fresh and full o...