What are your favourite memories of Glyndebourne?

Glyndebourne is in our genes! We first attended in 1982, coming from our home in the San Francisco Bay Area. Magical! best describes our first summer evening at Glyndebourne. We fell in love with the Sussex country setting, formal attire, and picnics on the lawn. The exquisite operas, singing, music, and sets continue to round out the entire dream adventure.

We have come many thrilling summers since our first visit. However, a very special evening we splendidly recall was in 2004. The opera being performed was Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini. Prior to the performance, as we gathered under the terrace roofs due to a sudden summer rain down pour, we were excited to be informed that Puccini's granddaughter was in attendance that evening. To our utter delight, she was standing nearby, and we had the pleasure of conversing in English and in Italian with her. That night's Gianni Schicchi was the best performance ever! We left the auditorium glowing with enthusiasm for opera at Glyndebourne.

Our first visit was in 1964 as guests of a client to hear a young (and then unknown) tenor in his one and only season at Sussex in the role of Idamante – Luciano Pavarotti!

For a few years after that we visited only occasionally as tickets – if you weren’t “in the know” - were like gold dust. Ten years later we started our own company and two years after that in 1976, when we made our first modest profit, Newlands Knight & Round Ltd spent virtually all of that profit on becoming corporate members.

Those were the Peter Hall glory days and we introduced many of our advertising clients to the joys of Glyndebourne. We also persuade a number of them of the benefit of advertising in the Programme Book – so much so that in Glyndebourne’s Golden Jubilee year (which coincided with our own tenth anniversary) we took nine consecutively linked pages, a feat that has not been matched since.

One of many instances of Glyndebourne’s typical kindness comes to mind in the year 1978. My youngest son, then aged eleven, was keen to see his first opera. He was a small boy – even for his age – and the average adult sitting in front of him would have completely obstructed his view. Glyndebourne arranged that we should have seats right in the middle of the front row of the balcony in the old theatre. His view of Hockney’s Magic Flute was perfect. He became a Glyndebourne enthusiast from that day onwards and after many years on the list is now a member in his own right.

Throughout the 70s never a year passed without one or more of our clients’ advertisements appearing in the Programme book – and many more of them appeared in the opera house itself as guests of directors of my company.

In 1989 for health reason I had to retire and the company was sold. Sadly, the new owners declined to continue the corporate membership. Following our long association, Glyndebourne exhibited their customary kindness once again and made me a private member – which I am pleased to maintain to the present day.

We have seen opera in many of the world’s houses and they mostly all have something special to offer their patrons. However, I think none has the friendliness and warmth that emanated from (I nearly said stones) bricks of Glyndebourne. I missed the 1934 foundation year (most of us did) I enjoyed the 1984 half-century celebrations. I look forward to the three-quarter century celebrations next year.

As a simple schoolboy offered a treat for my eighteenth birthday, for some reason I asked to go to Glyndebourne on June 28th. 1960 - a day before my birthday and with only Gilbert and Sullivan in the Winchester Guidhall as operatic experience - and we took four tickets to Der Rosenkavalier, in the Ebert / Messel production, with the usual strong Glyndebourne cast then or later to achieve great fame.

It was in the second act, with rising excitement and enthusiasm, that we and the audience rose to applaud (contrary to normal practice, which only applauded at the end of an act) the great quintet and I felt like cheering for ever until I was carried out: "to cease upon the midnight with no pain" as Keats put it. Of course we sat down and enjoyed the third Inn scene, set as a room within the set despite the narrowness of the Glyndebourne stage; an entirely memorable performance and my first Grand Opera. The second was Rigoletto and the third Parsifal at the ROH; an interesting mix.

The first production seen of any opera tends to be the touchstone against which subsequent productions are measured; Glyndebourne has helped in so many cases, but I always like to remind those involved that 50% of the audience has not seen the opera before, so Carmens in LA used car lots do not convey the excitement of smuggling over the Sierra Nevada.

Since then as a member we come three or four times a year, and recall other great successes such as Hockney's The Magic Flute, the Eugene Onegin with the country dance round a central flat (which compared interestingly with another superb production at the Garden the same year with the Act 3 dance processing down and back round central pillars, the Falstaff where Nanetta (Elizabeth Gale) and Fenton are silhouetted on a sheet, and the great Tristans of recent times.

We have always picnicked, and used to plunge into undergrowth between first and second pond for exclusivity - maybe the midges were not so bad then. Our two sons (aged 31 and 26) are now members, having been entered as applicants at ages 7 and 2; and we go to about 40 operas a year in most country house locations, the major houses and elsewhere.

Thank you Glyndebourne, for many happy evenings. We look forward to another successful season this year.

I have many treasured memories starting in June 1953 when I saw Ariadne auf Naxos as a bachelor sitting alone enjoying his last night in England before setting out early the next morning to start a career in Central Africa. It was magnificent. Four years later I married and, on our first visit to England I simply had to bring my newly wedded wife to Glyndebourne hoping that she would love opera as much as I did. We got tickets in 1960 for I Puritani with Joan Sutherland in the leading role. My wife was as enthralled as I was and we have both loved opera together ever since. In 1963 I acquired membership of the Glyndebourne Festival Society so that we have almost always got just the tickets we wanted and never cease to enjoy the beautiful rustic surroundings and, almost always, a superb performance.

You ask which was my all time favourite performance? I find that very difficult to answer but, in recent years, the most enjoyable have been Janacek's Jenufa - the only time I heard the Glyndebourne audience stamp their feet in appreciation - and the double bill of Gianni Schichi and The Miserly Knight. I really do hope that Glyndebourne will repeat that one soon.

SUMMER 1958

I was a young fellow working in London, and I had two tickets in the Gods, bought months in advance, for My Fair Lady. My flat-mate at the time was seriously courting a young woman whose father owned several thousand acres of East Anglia, and who was desperate to see My Fair Lady.

‘All right,’ I said finally, ‘you can have my tickets, but in return I want two tickets for Glyndebourne.’

‘Done,’ he said.

Working in Baker Street at the time, I flogged along at lunch time to Ibbs and Tillet, who ran Glyndebourne’s London box office. They offered me two stall tickets for Le Comte Ory which set me back six pounds the pair (twice the price of my Drury Lane tickets).

In those days, when one only had two weeks holiday a year, the next problem was to find someone with whom I could escape from London for a few hours on a midweek afternoon. I remembered Jenny.

Jenny was a model with gorgeous red hair, and, yes, she would love to come. She had heard of Glyndebourne, which was rather unusual in those days amongst the girls I usually went out with, but, like me had never been there. I told her we would take a picnic – I would bring champagne and she volunteered to bring the food.

I managed to borrow my mother’s car and eventually having driven several times round Cadogan Square looking for her address, eventually found it round the corner of a neighbouring street.

Jenny had a shopping bag which contained not only our picnic, but also a parcel she had promised to drop off at some friends on the way. By the time we found the friend’s address, we were already running late. We parked in the Car Park and made our way to our seats with moments to spare.

It was magic. Vittorio Gui was in the pit. Rossini’s music bubbled and fizzed away – the only Rossini I knew in those days was The Barber – while all the young men dressed as nuns tried to seduce the Crusaders’ wives and got drunk in Oliver Messel’s wobbly hand-painted scenery.

Came the interval and we returned to the car park to collect our picnic. On the way back I saw Jenny looking at some of the picnic rugs on which smoked salmon and asparagus were appearing.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said apologetically as she produced a brown paper bag from her shopping basket.

‘Looks lovely,’ I said, wondering what it contained. ‘Let’s find somewhere to sit.”

I think we ended up by the lake, though, after fifty years, it’s hard to be sure. I dug out the champagne, popped the cork and filled our glasses. Meanwhile Jenny busied herself with her brown bag, which contained a packet neatly wrapped in grease proof paper.

‘I’m sorry,’ she began again. ‘I had no idea it was like this – ’

‘Please,’ I reassured her. I raised my glass to her.

Slowly she unwrapped the grease proof paper and exposed four tomato sandwiches. How we laughed. Champagne and tomato sandwiches!

I have dined out many times at Glydebourne on my story of Jenny and her tomato sandwiches. I also listen occasionally to the old Gui recording of Le Comte Ory and think of that marvellous evening, and Jenny and her sandwiches. I have since spent many, many evenings at Glyndebourne, but somehow that very first evening fifty years ago remains stuck in my memory as clearly as any.

I first heard Glyndebourne Opera at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival. The performances were exceptional. We had Geraint Evans and Sesto Bruscantini in Falstaff, Denise Duval peerless as the Woman in La Voix Humaine (part of a triple bill) and Joan Sutherland in I Puritani. After this I was determined to get to Sussex and see Glyndebourne on its home ground, so I joined the Mailing List.

In 1962 I was delighted to obtain two tickets for Pelléas and Mélisande. It received excellent reviews and I listened spellbound to a broadcast while following the score. Imagine my shock on arriving at Glyndebourne to find that Pelléas and Mélisande had been cancelled. Instead of hearing Denise Duval as Mélisande we were to have Le Nozze di Figaro, not the same thing at all. A gentleman at the door told us how lucky we were to be hearing Figaro. I hope he meant that Figaro was much preferable to no performance at all, not that we would prefer it to Pelléas.

In the next two years I heard Richard Lewis in fine performances, as Florestan in Fidelio and as Idomeneo. In 1970 I saw Zauberflöte, and Calisto with Janet Baker, I loved the little bear.

I sent in my booking form virtually every year but I had to wait until 1975 for my next visit. I was only prepared to pay for the cheaper seats and I lived too far away to try for returned tickets at the last minute, but I had a stroke of luck in May 1975. On my way to Glyndebourne I discovered from a newspaper that there were half price tickets available in the stalls for The Cunning Little Vixen. It seems amazing that in 1975 Janáček was so little known. It was a lovely performance. The Yevgeny Onyegin that I also saw on that visit was good too.

In the 1970s I saw a number of performances by Glyndebourne Touring Opera. They were also very worth crossing the Pennines for.

In 1977 I was lucky enough to see three performances in Sussex. I was not impressed by Die Schweigsame Frau but found Falstaff and the The Rake’s Progress were much better. The 1980s were better still. I came to eight operas in six years. Among the very best were A Midsummer Night’s Dream and L’amour des Trois Oranges but I must not forget Albert Herring in 1986 and Jenůfa in 1989.

I had been on the waiting list for membership of the Festival Society for some time and my chance came in 1994 with the opening of the new theatre. I retired in that year and two days later I was at a performance of Don Giovanni, a rather odd production but a marvellous experience all the same. Apart from a production of Cosi where the most prominent feature of the set was an old fashioned radiator I can’t think of a performance that I have not enjoyed and at last in June 1999 I saw Pelléas et Mélisande at Glyndebourne.

I find it very difficult to pick out my favourite memories. I love the acoustics of the new house. In Tristan und Isolde Nina Stemme’s singing of the Liebestod was magical. It was great to hear Wagner sung and played with such clarity and meaning. Granted that Peter Sellar’s production was unusual, the fine Glyndebourne Chorus came into its own in Theodora. It was very moving. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream marvellous orchestral playing summoned up the magical world. These are my three favourites.

Remembering Glyndebourne in the 50’s

My father was called Jon Christie. He was an academic and, at the time that he and his namesake me, the head of Oxford College. On one occasion their identical names led to an embarrassing muddle, when both of them, instead of just one as had been intended, were asked to speak at the same event in the United States. Their hosts feared that they would be indignant at such apparent discourtesy but the two John Christies thought it a great joke, and made friends forthwith. I was still at school then but, already an opera fan, I had even spent a school prize book-token on Ernest Newman’s “Opera Nights”, so I was thrilled to hear that the great Founder of Glyndebourne and Audrey Mildmay were staying with my parents in Oxford. My mother was suffering from lumbago, and John startled a rather staid dinner party on dons by telling her the best cure for her was to kneel down “as if she were saying her prayers”, which he demonstrated, and then to “wiggle her bottom” – further demonstration. After this auspicious beginning to their friendship, my parents were regularly invited to the Box, and I remember how sad they were when Audrey died. My father showed me the touching letter which John wrote to him in reply to his letter of condolence, and I learnt what a remarkable person she was. Later I was given the set of LPs of the Don Giovanni in which she sang Zerlina; some of these records are almost worn out.

When I was eighteen John discovered that I was more or less the same age as Rosamund, his daughter. To my astonished delight and excitement, I was included in an invitation to go with my parents to Glyndebourne for the week-end. John was a wonderful host, and led me up to the door of the Glyndebourne Box, where the guest list read:

“Mr John Christie
Miss Christie

Mr. and Mrs. John Christie
Miss Christie”

No doubt there were others as well, but this was glory enough and I longed to steal the notice. The first opera I saw at Glyndebourne was Cosi with Serena Jurinac as Fiordiligi. I was dreadfully embarrassed because I referred to Despina as Zerlina and John teased me: “Yes and the Don was in good form tonight wasn’t he?”. Blushing, I corrected myself, “I meant, I meant Despina”. He put me at ease with a compliment: “It’s nice to find someone of your age who knows Mozart’s operas that well”. Dinner was not alarming as I had feared, because I was sitting next to Harry Blech who was extremely jolly and made me laugh; just as well because my other neighbour was very intimidating and clearly put out to have been seated next to someone so unimportant. I was pleased later on to hear John say that he found him rather pompous for someone so young. It seems extraordinary to be able to recall it in such detail, but it was one of the great moments of my life at that time.

That night I had a charming little bedroom high up in the house, with a glorious Glyndebourne view, but I had no idea where my parents’ room was, and I had no watch. This was a problem the next day, when I realised that I had absolutely no means of discovering what the time was, nor when and where breakfast would be. It was a beautiful summer morning, so, carrying my shoes in my hands, (they had been cleaned and left outside my door which deeply impressed me) I crept downstairs and found my way to a door which I could open – it was the days before I had heard of the hazards of burglar alarms in other people’s houses – and went into the garden. No one was about, and as far as I was concerned, it could have been any time between 6.30 and 8.30 a.m. so I wandered round the lake until, walking back through the garden, I saw someone coming towards me. It was John (needless to say in those more formal days I never dreamed of calling him John – to me he was always “Mr. Christie”) and he waved and called out “Do you like raspberries for breakfast?” I must have been starving by this time, and was happy to go down to the raspberry canes and pick two bowls full to carry back to one of the Wallops, where my parents, who had been looking form me, were surprised to find me breakfasting tête à tête with our host. Later that morning he took us back-stage and proudly showed us the motley collection of looking-glasses he had picked up for the dressing-rooms at local auctions to show the architects how to economise on their plans.

Until I married a few years later, these wonderful invitations were repeated – though one year my younger sister went instead of me. John even suggested that I should spend a season acting as a runner and general helper around the opera house. I longed to be allowed to accept such a splendid offer, especially as I liked Rosamund (pidge) very much, though she did seem very grown up compared to me. But my parents had made other plans (is it not now extraordinary to think how, in those days, teenagers were expected to fall in with whatever was proposed for them?) and I was made to turn it down. What a wimp I must have been! After that first visit it is harder to work out what happened when. I remember a star-studded performance of Figaro with Jurinac, Bruscantini and Gabriella Sciutti, and a moving Fidelio - was it the first time it was performed at Glyndebourne ? – when the prisoners were dressed identifiably as gentry, aristocrats, priests and lawyers, and the singer playing Don Pizarro told us that the temperature on stage was 102 degrees on the stage. A few weeks after I was married kind friends took us to Don Giovanni, my husband’s first experience of Glyndebourne and a perfect evening until I discovered that one of my earrings – a wedding present worn for the first time and given to me, as it happened, by the uncle of Brian Dickie – was missing. I was in tears on the way back in the train, but as I undressed, it fell out of my bra. My husband sent me off to have my ears pierced the next day.

In spite of small children and shortages of cash, we usually managed one opera a year after that, thanks to generous parents and friends. And now that we are members ourselves, we try to take the young and relatively impoverished as our guests in gratitude for all the pleasure we had at Glyndebourne in our youth.

My first visit to Glyndebourne was in 1959, when a friend and I saw the Silver Jubilee production of Der Rosenkavalier. For two ardent Straussians this was a perfect introduction, although our visit caused some trepidation beforehand. We worked in London and tried to see every production at Covent Garden and at Sadler’s Wells (now ENO).

I discovered that tickets might be available at Ibbs & Tillett in Wigmore Street, and used a morning of holiday to queue. We got ourselves suitably ready, and took a lawn-type picnic, but as we approached Ringmer we both became more apprehensive – was it for us? but even as we turned into the drive we knew that it was, and the magic started.

There have been too many memorable performances for me to list here – the first one, of course; the wonderful dark Don Giovanni; the Rachmaninov/Puccini double bill; Tristan - and so many others.

The magic had never faded, and I treasur my Membership, achieved in 1967.

SUMMER 1957

My first visit to Glyndebourne was in June 1957 when I was taken by my future husband (though we were not engaged then) to see a double bill - Der Schauspieldirektor (Mozart) followed by Ariadne auf Naxos (Richard Strauss).

I was spellbound by the whole occasion – the atmosphere, the setting and of course the performance. I recall having a picnic in the back of the car as it was raining and no marquee was provided in those days.

We married the following year and were able to go for one more season before our first child was born. We had to forgo our visits for a few years but as soon as our family were old enough to leave, we resumed our annual outings and have been every year since.

I always look forward with great anticipation to each season. Sadly my husband is no longer with us but my elder son and friends accompany me. There is a very special atmosphere at Glyndebourne – always very civilised and I love “people-watching” – the fashions fascinate me!

One of my all time favourite performances at Glyndebourne and one that sticks out in my memory is the final performance of Porgy and Bess with a standing ovation after the final curtain. Eugene Onegin is another of my lasting memories – I think I have seen two different productions and am eagerly anticipating this year’s performance.

SUMMER 2006

Two extraodinary things touching on champagne happened within 10 minutes or so on a glorious sunny day at Glyndebourne. As I opened our bottle I commented to my friend 'there is no ceiling for the cork to hit so where will the cork go?" As I looked skywards something hit my forefinger - the cork had gone straight up and down in spite of it being a windy day.

A short while later a loud cracking sound was heard. The table of our neighbours was collapsing and the four picnickers were sprawling across the grass. As two of us ran over to help their champagne was spurting sky-high out of the bottle like a fountain! If our picnicking neighbours read this we hope they did not suffer too much injury!