Discover Days
Explore the themes of Festival 2022, in these in-depth events featuring expert panellists and musical performances
Presented by Alexandra Coghlan, our opera specialist, these Discover Days are designed to enhance your enjoyment of the Festival operas and to explore some broader themes emerging from them.
Each event features expert presentations, a panel discussion and a musical preview.
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Sunday 12 June 2022, 10.30am
Ebert Room
From Alcina’s magical island to the night-time garden of Le nozze di Figaro, the stark cliffs and crashing waves of The Wreckers, to the bustling streets of Paris in La bohème, Festival 2022’s operas conjure vivid pictures of their natural – and urban – environments.
How do composers paint a storm or a city in sound? How does music become soundscape, and where does staging come into it? We explore all these questions and more in the first of this season’s Discover Days.
Presented by Alexandra Coghlan, our opera specialist, with contributions from Glyndebourne’s artistic director Stephen Langridge, musicologist Dr Flora Wilson, author, critic and broadcaster Nicholas Kenyon and Glyndebourne’s curator of exhibitions and collections.
Sunday 7 August 2022, 10.30am
Ebert Room
Whether it’s a mask, a secret identity or a carnival costume, opera loves a disguise, a transformation, an alter ego. This season sees Therese becoming Tiresias, streetwise widow Norina turn convent-girl innocent, Bradamante disguising herself as a man and the breathless clothes-swapping (and identity-swapping) of Figaro.
Why is opera so in thrall to disguise? What does it tell us about identity, society, gender? Where is the line between what we are and what we pretend to be? Is it just about comedy and play-acting, or is there something more serious at work here?
Presented by Alexandra Coghlan, our opera specialist, with contributions from Glyndebourne’s artistic director Stephen Langridge, writer and dramatug Benjamin Poore, musicologist Dr Lucy Walker and writer and broadcaster Sarah Lenton.