David Pickard counts himself lucky. As Glyndebourne’s General Director he has one of the top jobs in opera and confesses “I still have to pinch myself.” Here, he talks about his early career, his first Glyndebourne experience and meeting with Sam Mendes.
With an impressive CV that includes spells with the Royal Opera House and managing the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment David admits “I’ve worked with some fantastic organisations. I’ve been lucky.” What was it that drew him to Glyndebourne? “The attraction for Glyndebourne for anybody whether they are a director, a designer, an administrator or a singer is about the standards of the place and the attention to detail. To work for an organisation that puts on such extraordinary high quality work is something to cherish.”
Unusually for an opera house director, David trained as a musician. As a Choral Scholar at Cambridge he reacted against what he describes as a “very dry academic course” and instead became immersed in 19th century Romantic music. His passion for opera was apparent early on and his youthful enthusiasm for Wagner lead him on a pilgrimage to Bayreuth at just 17.
David’s earliest memory of Glyndebourne is of a dress rehearsal of Der Rosenkavalier in the early 80s. “I remember it being a beautiful hot day. I remember the doors opening at the beginning of the Long Interval and seeing sheep in the field. The only opera houses I’d been to before then had busy roads outside them. It was a strange juxtaposition of this amazing blissful experience inside the theatre and then this strange thing of seeing a sheep!”
When David was appointed as Glyndebourne’s General Director in 2001 he joined one of the youngest management teams in opera. Gus Christie had just begun his tenure as Chairman and Vladimir Jurowski had recently been appointed as Music Director. At just 40, David was the oldest of the three.
David concedes that looking after such a long tradition of excellence is a great responsibility. “It’s an honour and it’s also terrifying as well because you have a legacy to look back on which is full of extraordinary things and you’re trying to make sure that what you’re doing is carrying on the traditions of the place. I think it’s also incredibly important you don’t dwell too much on the past, that you look forward…so change is also a very good thing. It’s a question of making sure that Glyndebourne changes where it’s appropriate and moves forward but never loses sight of those core values of artistic excellence, attention to detail and encouraging young singers and young artists.”
David is committed to introducing new directors to Glyndebourne. “Something I’ve wanted to do is bring new people into the operatic fold which, in itself, is extremely risky because it’s a difficult thing to direct an opera.” His forward thinking approach has recently paid off with the announcement of Sam Mendes’ debut at the 2010 Festival. The pair first met in 2001 to discuss the idea. “We talked about things that were in our schedule at the time and we talked more generally about the things that he might want to do.” Mozart quickly became the focus of Mendes’ interest and luckily it turned out to be the right moment for him to come to opera. “For somebody who was obviously very interested in music it was the next mountain to climb", David explains.
David’s enthusiasm for new work will culminate next summer with the world premiere of an opera commissioned by Glyndebourne. The project has been in the air since his earliest meetings with Music Director Vladimir Jurowski. “Vladimir is passionately committed to contemporary music and we decided we would make a big statement in one year with a contemporary piece in the Festival. We both happen to very much admire the work of Peter Eötvös and so we went to him. Although he’s a very busy composer we were lucky that at the time he had just conducted here and had rather fallen in love with the place (as many people do) and he was keen to make it happen.”
The idea to adapt the Gabriel García Márquez novel, Of Love and Other Demons, came from Eötvös. “He’s a very literary minded man with strong theatrical instincts and it was a book that he felt would lend itself to being turned into an opera. He particularly felt that it was a story that would work very well in the particular setting of Glyndebourne. The minute I read it I could see what had attracted him. It’s a story that operates on many levels but I think that at it’s simplest level it is just a very beautiful love story.”
Alongside his interest in new work David’s is committed to making Glyndeboure more accessible though initiatives such as the recent Glyndebourne cinema screenings. The overwhelming response from audiences was “extremely positive” and he’s keen to do more. “We tested the water to see whether people were interested in coming and we’ve been quite overwhelmed with the feedback.” Glyndebourne’s plans to widen its audience don’t stop there. With a commitment to film as many productions as possible and deliver content online David wants to give even more people a chance to sample Glyndebourne productions.
Not surprisingly, David finds it tremendously difficult to single out his best achievement at Glyndebourne. However, he does confess a personal affection for the recent production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. “That just seemed to me to come close to the operatic perfection I think Glyndebourne stands for. I think it’s a marvellous production and it happens to be one of my favourite pieces..…it’s a piece that I know very well and find continually exciting and challenging and I think that both in the Tour and the Festival we achieved fantastically high standards.”
Achieving these high standards does, of course, involve taking risks: “The experience you get when seeing an opera when everything is right, is the best experience you can have in any theatre or even in any kind of art form. For me, the worst thing about opera is how difficult that is to achieve, in the sense that it’s a very risky business and if one element of those different things that make up opera doesn’t quite fall into place it can sink the whole evening. I think it’s important to realise just how difficult it is to create wonderful nights in an opera house. But I think Glyndebourne should be pretty impressed with its track record."
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What advice would David give to ambitious young opera administrators?
You must have the single most important asset: “an intense love for the art form”. An academic background in music is helpful but by no means essential. It is much more important to make good contacts and get experience whether paid or unpaid. He concedes that “it’s going to be a long process and you should be prepared to work for any arts organisation, not just opera.”
His formative years working at the open air theatre in Regent’s Park were excellent training. “I think the reason I learnt most there was because I was one of a very small staff of three. I did everything to do with the money which included emptying the phone boxes in the dressing rooms, writing every cheque and organising the payroll. None of that has anything to do with opera. But to see where the money comes in and where it all goes out. That sort of experience in terms of management of an arts organisation is invaluable.”