Glyndebourne Festival 2012

This is perhaps the only opera to be inspired by a newspaper cartoon strip. Every morning, Janácek would catch up with the latest exploits of the mischievous vixen Bystrouška. He became such a dedicated follower of her adventures that he responded with an outpouring of music, rich in both humour and humanity, which evokes the wooded rolling hills of the composer’s homeland of Moravia.

Janácek’s vision immeasurably deepens the comic strip’s depiction of rural life. The Vixen encounters humans, of whom she learns to be extremely wary. She ignores the well-meant advice of a mournful dog and does exactly what you might expect when she is confronted by a bunch of hysterical chickens. She cheekily evicts a badger from his home and settles in herself. Eventually, she falls in love with a handsome fox and marries him.

All around her the life of the forest continues on its inevitable cycle. And the Gamekeeper, growing wiser as he grows older, sees it all.

A new production for the 2012 Festival. Sung in Czech with English supertitles


Conductor Vladimir Jurowski
Director Melly Still
Set Designer Tom Pye
Costume Designer Dinah Collin
Lighting designer Paule Constable
Movement Director Maxine Doyle


Cast includes :

Gamekeeper Sergei Leiferkus
Vixen (Bystrouška) Lucy Crowe
Fox Emma Bell
Parson / Badger Mischa Schelomianski
Harašta, a poacher William Dazeley
Gamekeeper’s Wife / Owl Jean Rigby
Schoolmaster/Mosquito Adrian Thompson
Pásek, Innkeeper Colin Judson
Innkeeper’s Wife Sarah Pring

Writers and painters, desperate to make their mark, permanently in debt, living in squalid shared accommodation, falling tumultuously in and out of love. Puccini – and his long-suffering librettists Illica and Giacosa – created painfully true-to-life characters who make La bohème as relevant now as it was when it was first performed in 1896.

Director David McVicar has devised a production that reflects every aspect of Puccini’s innate sympathy for young love in all its passionate sincerity. His staging, as noted by The Financial Times, ‘gives us a La bohème for today, with unexaggerated, ordinary people in real situations’.

Using Henri Murger’s book about bohemian life in Paris as a source, Illica and Giacosa fashioned a perceptive and touching dramatic text. Puccini was notorious for driving his writing collaborators mad, sending drafts back repeatedly for tightening up, refining and improving. The result is an unusually seamless match between words and music and a narrative that pulls you into the heart of the drama.

A revival of the 2000 Tour production. Sung in Italian with English supertitles.


Conductor Jakub Hruša / Jeremy Bines
Director David McVicar
Revival director Lee Blakeley
Set designer Michael Vale
Costume designer Mikki Engelsbel
Lighting designer Paule Constable
Movement director Leah Hausman


Cast includes :

Rodolfo Atalla Ayan / Bryan Hymel
Mimì Keri Alkema
Marcello Vincenzo Taormina
Schaunard Nicholas Lester
Colleine Lukas Jakobski
Musetta Natasha Jouhl
Benoit/Alcindoro Richard Mosley-Evans

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.

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 of insight’ whilst for The Telegraph it ‘met the Glyndebourne gold standard’.


Conductor James Gaffigan
Director Peter Hall
Revival Director Lynne Hockney
Set Designer Hildegard Bechtler
Costume Designer Moritz Junge
Lighting Designer Peter Mumford


Cast includes :

Cenerentola (Angelina) Elizabeth DeShong
Don Ramiro Taylor Stayton
Don Magnifico Umberto Chiummo
Dandini Bruno Taddia
Alidoro Shenyang
Clorinda Elena Xanthoudakis
Tisbe Victoria Yarovaya

A new production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro has particular resonance for Glyndebourne. In 1934, it was our first opera to be performed, and it was also the opening production of the newly built opera house in 1994. This production brings together two thrilling artistic talents. Conductor Robin Ticciati will be Glyndebourne’s new Music Director from 2014 and director Michael Grandage will return for the first time since making his opera debut at Glyndebourne with Billy Budd in 2010.

For Mozart, constantly chafing at the restrictions imposed by his aristocratic patrons, the story of servants outwitting their master had immediate appeal. He responded with music that is unrivalled in its beauty and acute levels of characterisation. The Countess’s pain at losing her husband’s love; Susanna’s determination to marry her beloved Figaro despite the Count’s opposition; Cherubino’s hormonal outpourings; Figaro’s quick-witted ducking and diving in his attempts to hang on to Susanna and defeat the scheming machinations of Bartolo and Marcellina – all these elements are woven together with consummate skill.

A new production for the 2012 Festival. Sung in Italian with English supertitles


Conductor Robin Ticciati
Director Michael Grandage
Designer Christopher Oram
Lighting Designer Paule Constable
Movement Director Ben Wright


Cast includes :

Figaro Vito Priante
Susanna Sophie Karthäuser
Countess Sally Matthews
Count Audun Iversen
Bartolo Andrew Shore
Marcellina Ann Murray
Cherubino Isabel Leonard
Don Basilio Alan Oke
Don Curzio Colin Judson
Barbarina Sarah Shafer

Purcell’s intoxicating combination of words and music alternates elements of the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a variety of musical interludes. A magical brew has been concocted by director Jonathan Kent in inventive collaboration with designer Paul Brown.

The glass-fronted cases of a 17th-century cabinet of curiosities disgorge the black-winged inhabitants of a fairy world who make it their business to daze and confuse the poor humans who have accidentally strayed into their kingdom. The mixture is quintessentially English – one moment pastoral and elegiac, the next pure end-of-the-pier slapstick.

Baroque specialist Laurence Cummings will lead the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment from the harpsichord in this revival of a production that enchanted audiences on its first outing in 2009. The Daily Telegraph called it ‘an absolute riot, but executed with taste and style’ while The Observer said that ‘it is hard to imagine a more brilliantly creative approach to the work’.

When it was first produced at the Dorset Gardens Theatre in London in 1692, The Fairy Queen featured stage effects that nearly bankrupted the theatre. There were elaborate costumes, swans gliding over lakes, grottoes, woods and 12-foot high fountains. At Glyndebourne there will be dazzling singing and dancing, flamboyant cross-dressing, a flying horse and a warren full of rampant rabbits!

A revival of the 2009 Festival production. Supported by The Fairy Queen Syndicate. Sung in English with English supertitles


Conductor Laurence Cummings
Director Jonathan Kent
Designer Paul Brown
Lighting designer Mark Henderson
Choreographer Kim Brandstrup


Cast includes :

Soprano/Night/The Plaint Carolyn Sampson
Soprano/Juno/Chinese Woman Emmanuelle de Negri
Soprano/Mystery/1st Fairy/ Nymph Claire Debono
Tenor/Secrecy/Chinese Man Peter Gijsbertsen
Mopsa/Flute Robert Burt
Bass/Hymen/Sleep/Coridon/Winter David Soar

Ravel’s two one-act operas will reunite director Laurent Pelly and conductor Kazushi Ono, who made their Glyndebourne debuts in 2008 with Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. While L’enfant et les sortilèges shares with that opera a child’s-eye view of a sometimes threatening world, L’heure espagnole is a thoroughly adult confection.

The play on which Ravel based his opéra espagnole is a clever conceit set in the house of a clockmaker. It compares the wound-up mechanism of a clock with the erotic compulsions driving flesh-and-blood humans. Concepción devises a complex sequence of moves and counter-moves to conceal the presence of her various admirers. While directing these activities she becomes increasingly impressed by the physical attributes of her unwitting accomplice, Ramiro. Stéphanie d’Oustrac, who last sang at Glyndebourne as Sesto in Giulio Cesare, will sing Concepción, while Canadian baritone Elliot Madore will make his UK and Glyndebourne debut as Ramiro.

In L’enfant et les sortilèges, inanimate objects come to life when a child, fed up with doing his homework, throws a temper tantrum. All the things that have been damaged by him start to voice their objections: a broken cup and teapot, a shepherd and shepherdess from the wallpaper he ripped, a battered armchair and the princess from the torn pages of a story book. When the sums from his homework and the animals and plants in the garden turn on the child as well, Ravel’s music reaches a fierce climax. Only the child’s kindness to an injured squirrel saves him and brings the opera to a touchingly poignant conclusion.

A new production for the 2012 Festival. Supported by Michael and Dorothy Hintze. Sung in French with English supertitles


Conductor Kazushi Ono
Director Laurent Pelly
Set Designer – L’Enfant et les Sortileges Barbara De Limburg
Original Set Design – L’Heure Espagnole Caroline Ginet and Florence Evrard
Costume Designer Laurent Pelly
Lighting designer Joel Adam


Cast includes :

Ramiro Elliot Madore
Torquemada François Piolino
Concepción Stéphanie D'Oustrac
Gonzalve Alek Shrader
Don Inigo Gomez Paul Gay