Glyndebourne on the Stage «

Glyndebourne on the Stage

Friday 22nd June 2018

Getting through the summer. Can breathe again now that my garden opening is over – more later. Two things went wrong with the buffet menu. 14 lunched in the drawing room and 10 took tea in the dining room only partially restored after the lime re-plastering of the ceiling in part.

I was thrilled with the play about Glyndebourne by David Hare: The Moderate Soprano. Thought it would be political and narrow. Can’t bear David Hare whenever he opens his mouth. Know nothing of his plays. His frockage is ghastly as well, although he is married to Nicole Farhi. Why?

But The Moderate Soprano is open-minded, discursive and fascinating. The central figure is John Christie himself, the founder of Glyndebourniana, played by Roger Allam Marvellous opening. Christie goes: ‘The gardeners are very knowledgeable, they have much skill and training… but I own it.’ At once I felt at home: ownership is at the core of my life. I was born into ownership and have remained there ever since, gradually owning more and more without lifting a finger. But who really owns is a question in the play. Later on the eminent musicians and stage directors who pitched up at Glyndebourne in retreat from Nazi Germany get quite uppity with Christie: ‘You had some ideas for the garden once,’ they say. ‘What became of them?’ ‘Well, I told them I don’t like pink,’ Christie replies helplessly. Then they inform him that Glyndebourne opera won’t be Wagner as he had wanted but Mozart (‘Is he any good?’ Christie goes. ‘Don’t tell me, not The Marriage of Figaro‘). Yes, The Marriage of Figaro. After the War, Christie soothes his sickly wife with a recital of the programmes for the first six seasons before the War. They love the names but Cosi they could never be reconciled to. It was their life’s work, although really the creation of others, most of all German refugees who fashioned the dream of English country house opera we all crave today. Christie is left to pay for it, while jumping up and down on the side-lines saying, ‘ It’ll take them all day to get here. They’ll spend the morning cleaning their shoes. I don’t care if it costs them their life savings. They must pay the price for art. And once they’re here, I’m not having them leaving. I’m going to switch all the lights out.’ Well, thank you very much, John Christie. Thank you for giving us the agony and thrill of Glyndebourne, the conveyance there, how to pack and heave the picnic in evening clothes, how not to crease in the car, finally the lawn and house which must be the burning golden essence of the English country house in its setting, itself a kind of stage looking out onto that perfect fold of sheep and farmland, enclosed yet open. But how to get a good place on it?Although the house is a Victorian fake. Then the drive back and the anguished unpicking of the picnic the next day.

Don’t forget the opera. Royston King says Glyndebourne never again. Too much trouble. Acis and Galetea, which we took in West Hampstead a few days ago, a better substitute. Up to a point; Glyndebourne got an audience originally because it was good. Only six people came to the 1st performance of Cosi in 1934 or thereabouts. But then came the notices. I’ve never been let down by Glyndebourne. It’s always been worth it. Except I wasn’t mad about Madama Butterfly, which I saw at the beginning of June.

Christie, for all his martinet carry-on and craziness, knew that. He knew that it had got to be good. It isn’t just that for £250 you can have, for the evening, the feel of ownership, of drive, house, gardens and grounds.