Glyndebourne: The Untold History Page #5

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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!

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