Christmas Concerts

A brief introduction:

Aidan Oliver conducting the 2025 Christmas Concert. Photo: ASH

Join the massed forces of the internationally renowned Glyndebourne Chorus, the Glyndebourne Sinfonia and the talented children of the Glyndebourne Youth Opera for a concert of carols, opera choruses, orchestral favourites and more under the baton of Glyndebourne Chorus Director Aidan Oliver.

These annual concerts have become a highlight of the Glyndebourne year, a chance to hear the company’s world-class musicians bring Christmas to joyous musical life, and join in with some of your best-loved carols.

Why not to miss it:

Expect operatic highlights – great overtures, choruses and arias, showcasing soloists from the Glyndebourne Chorus: the vocal stars-of-the-future – as well as orchestral showpieces and a new seam of classic film scores. There will be carols from around the world, and even a chance to sing along with familiar favourites. The performance will be conducted and presented by Glyndebourne Chorus Director Aidan Oliver, with specially devised lighting and animations on the Glyndebourne stage.

A great moment to look out for:

Venetian tragedy La Gioconda is not an opera you often see on stage these days. Amilcare Ponchielli’s greatest hit may have been a nineteenth-century triumph, but this grandest of grand operas has since become more of a rarity. Or at least most of it has. The enchanting Act III orchestral sequence Dance of the Hours remains a concert-hall classic, no small thanks to Walt Disney. Because who could ever fully disentangle its five vividly coloured sections – taking the action from dawn through day, dusk, night, and back to morning – from Fantasia’s dancing ostriches, hippos and crocodiles?

The original operatic context is somewhat darker. Alvise, leader of the Inquisition, has invited all of Venice to his palazzo for a ballet performance. Once the struggle between good and evil has played out on stage he reveals the dead body of his wife Laura….

There’s little hint of this violence in the gorgeous music though. Dawn is painted in delicate harp shimmer, daytime’s gentle rhythm is captured in the dance’s most famous melody, while night is led by surging cellos and the new day arrives in an irrepressible can-can.

Cast & Creative Team:

Glyndebourne’s Chorus Director Aidan Oliver returns to host and conduct this musical celebration. He’s joined by the mighty Glyndebourne Chorus and the dynamic Glyndebourne Sinfonia, as well as the children of Glyndebourne Youth Opera

Glyndebourne Christmas Concert 2025. Photo: ASH

Main image: Fototeca Gilardi/Getty Images; image design Louise Richardson