Stage: Bravo
L’enfant et les Sortilèges
The announcement of the 2015 Glyndebourne season reminds us how lucky we are to have this world famous opera house on our doorstep
The first professionally staged UK performance of Donizetti’s Poliuto is to open Glyndebourne Festival 2015, an event that will see 15 Glyndebourne debuts and 23 role debuts. The Festival 2015 repertoire spans 300 years and also includes Glyndebourne’s first staging of Handel’s Saul.
The full season line-up was announced last week following the last performance of the 2014 Festival, a season which saw the following successes: Box Office sales of 98% of financial capacity, a doubling of the live audience of 98,000 who attended Festival 2014 in person, through cinema screenings and free online streamings, plus a sell-out of the first dedicated Festival performance for subscribers to Glyndebourne’s Under-30s scheme.
David Pickard, General Director of Glyndebourne, said: “I am delighted that as well as maintaining our high artistic standards and international reputation for discovering exciting young artists, Glyndebourne’s 2014 Festival reached broader audiences than ever before. As a privately funded Festival, I am particularly proud that we are the only UK opera company to offer our performances for free online, to be accessed by audiences right across the globe. Those streamings, together with the success of our dedicated Under 30s performance, were highlights of the season for me. I hope that all those who saw Festival 2014 operas, whether on stage, on screen or online, went away with a new, or renewed, love of live opera.”
Poliuto will be conducted by Enrique Mazzola and directed by Mariame Clément, the duo behind Glyndebourne’s acclaimed 2011 production of Don Pasquale. American tenor Michael Fabiano, who made his Glyndebourne debut in Festival 2014’s new production of La Traviata, will sing the title role alongside Ana María Martínez, who returns to Glyndebourne for the second time in a role debut as Paolina following her sensational 2009 debut in Rusalka.
Michael Fabiano said: “I’m happy to return to a theatre tasked with producing high-powered, high quality art, and performing Poliuto at the Glyndebourne Festival fulfils that call.”
Saul is the fifth work by Handel to be staged by Glyndebourne since the opening of the current theatre in 1994.
Brilliant and provocative Australian opera and theatre director Barrie Kosky will direct, with Ivor Bolton conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Christopher Purves will sing the title role, Iestyn Davies will perform David, the acclaimed British soprano Lucy Crowe makes a role debut as Merab, and American tenor Paul Appleby makes his Glyndebourne debut as Jonathan.
David McVicar – who has previously directed works as diverse as Giulio Cesare, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Carmen, and La bohème for Glyndebourne – will direct the Festival’s third new production, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, last seen in the Festival in 1988. Glyndebourne’s Music Director, Robin Ticciati, will undertake his fifth Mozart opera for Glyndebourne, conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a world class cast including Sally Matthews, Edgaras Montvidas and Mari Eriksmoen, who makes her UK and Glyndebourne debut.
Revivals include the Ravel Double Bill of L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges, David McVicar’s 2002 production of Carmen and a revival of Fiona Shaw’s 2013 Tour production of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia.
Members’ booking from October 2014, public booking opens on 9 March 2015. For more information, visit glyndebourne.com
