Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an annual opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.
This article is about the Glyndebourne opera festival. For the country house and opera house, see Glyndebourne.Glyndebourne Festival Opera
In 1968, Glyndebourne Festival Opera established a touring ensemble, Glyndebourne Touring Opera, which in its first season took opera productions to Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Oxford. In addition to bringing the work of Glyndebourne Festival Opera to audiences some distance from Glyndebourne, Glyndebourne Touring Opera offers opportunities for younger opera singers to develop their craft. In 2003, the Glyndebourne Touring Opera administrative duties were absorbed back into the main Glyndebourne Festival Opera administration, and the touring company was renamed Glyndebourne on Tour. The touring company now has the name of Glyndebourne Tour. Unlike Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Glyndebourne Tour does receive some subsidy, from the Arts Council England.
As of 2022, the Tour performs in the Milton Keynes Theatre, the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, the Theatre Royal in Norwich and the Liverpool Empire Theatre.[16]
The tour normally takes place in autumn following the festival season, and typically includes three weeks of performances at Glyndebourne, followed by one week in each of the other locations. The touring ensemble has separate music directors, as follows:
Ticciati is the first former music director of Glyndebourne on Tour to be named music director of the full Glyndebourne Festival Opera company.
Glyndebourne Festival Opera has also toured internationally, including the Adelaide Festival in 2006 with its production of Flight by Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis.
In January 2023, the company announced that the planned 2023 Glyndebourne on Tour season will not occur, as a result of the reduced funding from Arts Council England for the 2023–2026 National Portfolio.[18] In December 2023, the company announced the appointment of Adam Hickox as the new principal conductor of Glyndebourne Sinfonia, the new name for the Glyndebourne on Tour Orchestra, with immediate effect.[19]
Finances[edit]
Glyndebourne is constituted as a registered charity called Glyndebourne Productions Limited, which is a company limited by guarantee. It has a wholly owned subsidiary, Glyndebourne Enterprises Limited, which carries out merchandising, production hire and media development activities, and donates its profits to the charity. A related charity called the Glyndebourne Arts Trust carries out fund-raising activities. Glyndebourne Association America allows residents of the United States to make tax efficient donations to Glyndebourne.[20]
Glyndebourne has an annual budget of a little over £20 million, as of 2010. The Festival is the only major opera season in the United Kingdom which is not state subsidised. Glyndebourne on Tour receives an annual subsidy of around £1.5 million from Arts Council England, but is budgeted to make an annual loss even after this has been credited. The shortfall is covered by an internal cross subsidy.
Other media[edit]
The Glyndebourne Label was established in 2008 to release live recordings on CD. Commercial releases have included Mozart's Idomeneo (with Luciano Pavarotti and Gundula Janowitz), Dvořák's Rusalka and Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd. During the music directorship of Vladimir Jurowski,[21][22] the festival began its "Glyndebourne on Screen" programme, for viewers to see performances from the festival in cinemas and live-streaming on personal computers, the latter in partnership with The Guardian newspaper.