What’s the essence of Glyndebourne? “Well,” says the man sitting opposite me in his ancient tome-lined study, looking out over the glorious gardens and misty downs, “my grandfather used to say, ‘Not the best we can do, but the best that can be done anywhere’. That’s still the motto. Quality is the basis of everything here, from the wigmakers to the casting and coaching. If you let standards slip . . .” The sentence remains unfinished, but the shudder says it all. At Glyndebourne the idea is unthinkable.
The man is Gus Christie, and his grandfather was John Christie, who inaugurated the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in his Tudor and mock-Jacobean Sussex mansion 75 years ago this month. The Christie squirearchy had acquired the place in the 1830s, but it took them 100 years, and two strokes of luck, to hit on the format for this quintessential English summer picnic (with a nice bit of opera attached). The first was the arrival — to add a little professional stiffening to some village music-making — of a beautiful Canadian soprano called Audrey Mildmay. John was besotted; they honeymooned in Salzburg and Bayreuth, and the idea of establishing an “English Bayreuth” grew in his mind.
The second stroke of good fortune, paradoxically, was the rise of Hitler. Many top-notch creative types were forced from Germany into exile and Christie cannily snapped up three of them, the conductor Fritz Busch, the director Carl Ebert and the impresario Rudolf Bing to run his new opera festival. When this trio produced a sensationally good Marriage of Figaro to launch the new enterprise, on May 28, 1934, the gold standard was set.
John’s son, George, ran the show when his dad died, and engaged the very English architect Michael Hopkins to build the new theatre in the mid-1990s. Gus, George’s son, took over the family business at the stroke of midnight on Millennium Eve, a typical Christie touch. “Of course we always knew that Dad would turn 65 on December 31, 1999,” Gus says.
So was it ordained at birth that Gus would one day inherit the mantle? “Not at all. I have an older brother, and in my early twenties I pursued my own career as a wildlife film-maker. But my dad asked me to join the board when I was 25 and that gave me a fairly strong clue that he wished me to succeed him. I was 36 when I took over.”
Glyndebourne may still be a family-led operation, but it’s a big one. The festival season runs from May to August. But in the autumn an extended tour takes its productions round Britain, with many of the thrusting young singers who form the chorus during the summer given a chance to take on the big roles. Work on the following summer’s productions usually starts immediately after that. “It’s a lovely atmosphere here; you really feel part of the family,” says Pauline Lecrass, who joined Glyndebourne in 2006 as head of costume, after 14 years at English National Opera. “But there’s also a big pressure: six opera productions must be staged in a very few weeks. We prepare for that all year round. Paradoxically, life here feels much less seasonal than at ENO, where opera stopped altogether in the summer. But at least we have all the workshops on site here, which is a rarity in the British opera world.”
Another rarity, perhaps the most glaring difference between Glyndebourne and every other top-league British opera company, is that the festival receives not a penny of public subsidy. The Christies, a fiercely independent clan, would have it no other way. But there’s no doubt that this adds to the pressure on Gus, especially in an era of collapsing banks and relatively impoverished donors.
“We certainly can’t afford to pay singers the fees that subsidised houses pay,” he admits, raising the question of why taxpayers are funding such generous fees at, say, Covent Garden. “But singers don’t come here for the money. It’s more that they are going to be singing from this stage, working with directors such as Richard Jones or conductors such as Vladimir Jurowski, and are able to bring their families to a Sussex cottage for the summer rather than being stuck in a hotel room in a big city.”
All of that certainly appeals to the young American singer Jennifer Holloway, who made a brilliant impression last year as Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, and is back as Meg Page in Verdi’s Falstaff, the opening production this season. “It’s like nowhere else I’ve ever worked,” she says. “I love the extended rehearsal period: six weeks really gives you time to get under the skin of your character and the opera. And I love the feeling of concentration because down here you are away from everything else.”
What about the rituals: the audience in bow ties; the picnics; the feeling of stepping back into Brideshead Revisited? “Oh yeah, that’s a little odd,” Holloway laughs. “I had no idea before I arrived. But it’s cute. Last year my father hired a tux to come to Hansel and Gretel. He and my mother realised that it was a special thing. They’re not rich, and neither are many of the people who come here. It’s like having a fairytale evening.
“And the long supper interval is a brilliant idea. You don’t spend the last act thinking, ‘My gosh, I’m so hungry’. Mind you, that big gap is strange when you’re performing. At the time of Hansel and Gretel I was breastfeeding. I spent the interval pumping so that I could still look like a boy in Act III.”
The “fairytale evening” doesn’t come cheap. Top-price seats are £210, though you can stand for £15, and the under-thirties can acquire stalls tickets to a few shows for £30 each. “Opera is expensive, and the box office and subscriptions account for 80 per cent of our income,” Christie says. “But last year we employed a number-cruncher to look at our pricing. That led us to raise the top-price tickets, and some people are happy to pay whatever we ask, while keeping 75 per cent of the tickets at the same price or less. That way, the wealthy are subsidising the less well-off.”
One of Christie’s main tasks is to field the flak when Glyndebourne does the kind of radical production that makes its elderly but highly voluble subscribers (average age 65-plus) froth at the mouth. “I do receive a lot of ‘how dare you’ letters,” he sighs. “But we still employ directors who do straight and honest productions. The key is to get a good balance. This season, for instance, Richard Jones [the director of the new Falstaff] isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t think Jonathan Kent’s Fairy-Queen will be particularly provocative and I expect Melly Still to do a traditional job on Rusalka.”
He admits, however, that he is still on a “learning curve” when it comes to production and casting decisions. “I respect the judgments of the very good people we employ,” he says. But will he become increasingly assertive, as his dad did? “The longer I’m here the more I will form my own opinions,” he replies, with a smile.
Like his grandfather, he’s about to marry an opera singer from across the Atlantic: the fabulously comely Danielle de Niese. The wedding will be in London in December. “I expect it may involve some music,” Christie suggests, drily.
And after that? Will he, too, stay at the Glyndebourne helm till 65? “Who knows? It’s not really that far away.” And will his children succeed him? “It would be nice, but I wouldn’t force it on them. It wasn’t forced on me.”
The Glyndebourne Festival opens on May 21 (01273 813813)
