During 1966 George Christie announced plans to start a touring company, and two years later in the spring of 1968, Glyndebourne Touring Opera made its inaugural tour, visiting Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Oxford. There were only two other touring opera companies at the time and Glyndebourne established its own identity immediately with its innovative productions performed to exceptionally high standards, benefiting as it did from the Festival’s extended rehearsal period. It was greeted by enormous critical acclaim and overwhelming public support which has continued ever since. In 2003, the administration of GTO was brought back under the Glyndebourne ‘umbrella’, and as a result was re-named Glyndebourne on Tour.
The reasons for its formation were twofold; to make the work of the Glyndebourne Festival accessible to audiences throughout the country, and to give performing opportunities to young and promising singers. From the beginning Glyndebourne has not been interested in names as such, but it has been successful in spotting artists who were at the beginning of their careers. Roberto Alagna, Thomas Allen, Emma Bell, Alfie Boe, Orla Boylan, Ryland Davies, Omar Ebrahim, Gerald Finlay, Elizabeth Gale, Alison Hagley, Philip Langridge, Felicity Lott, Benjamin Luxon, Valerie Masterson, Rosalind Plowright, John Rawnsley, Amanda Roocroft, Kate Royal, John Tomlinson, Richard Van Allan, Lillian Watson and Willard White are among the many singers with international careers, who began with GTO.
At the instigation of Anthony Whitworth-Jones, formerly Administrator of GTO, and until August 1998 General Director of Glyndebourne, a policy of presenting contemporary opera was introduced designed to play that most important of all roles, the commissioning of new works for the future. The policy first bore fruit in 1984 with Oliver Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop!, followed by Nigel Osborne's The Electrification of the Soviet Union in 1987, the UK premiere of Sir Michael Tippett's New Year in 1990, the premieres of Harrison Birtwistle's The Second Mrs Kong in 1994 and The Last Supper in 2000, and Jonathan Dove's new opera Flight in 1998. GTO is also well known for productions of little known or infrequently presented operas, such Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice in 1989, and Siegfried Matthus Cornet Christoph Rilke's Song of Love and Death in 1993.
New Opera House