Latest news with #Glyndebourne
The Guardian
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Le Nozze di Figaro review – astute period staging of Mozart's masterpiece is as poignant as it is funny
When Glyndebourne opened its doors in 1934, it did so with The Marriage of Figaro, the first in a fabled line of productions of Mozart's comic masterpiece to grace its stages over the last 90 years. If the director Mariame Clément felt any pressure, it didn't show. Hers is a nuanced staging that manages to be astute, funny and moving all at once. It's also extremely well sung. The opera is about many things, but a great deal hinges on the ancient concept of droit de seigneur, a barbaric medieval custom whereby a feudal lord was entitled to have sex with a female servant on her wedding night. Mozart's Count, we learn, has made a show of ending the tradition, though he still hopes to bed the feisty Susanna, maidservant to his estranged Countess. Clément sets the show in its original period, allowing its parallels to resonate across the centuries with today's audiences, and so they do. There is a powerful interrogation of character here: the determination and resourcefulness of Susanna, the aching loneliness of the Countess, and the testosterone-fuelled antagonism that develops between the Count and his increasingly implacable manservant, Figaro. Revolutionary feelings erupt at several points. Whether or not he prevails in his immediate sexual depredations, the Count's days are plainly numbered. He might join in the final outburst of bonhomie, but as a predator his career is in tatters. Clément is clearly blessed with funny bones, as are most of her singers. At the opening of Act III, we hear the Count's voice, seemingly from off stage. Moments later, as a wriggling foot emerges over its rim, we realise he was submerged in the bathtub all along. The fistfuls of documents concealed under Marcelina's voluminous skirts, the rogue's gallery of doddery old men, and a hastily improvised game of rock paper scissors all receive well-earned laughs. Julia Hansen's rotating sets are a marvel, presenting a labyrinthine succession of pastel-painted rooms, corridors and gardens. Equally eye-catching are her vibrant costumes and Paule Constable's atmospheric lighting, which never fails to pick out a face. Riccardo Minasi drives the score hard, though his flexible beat is always alert to the drama. The playing of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is exhilarating, though balance is sometimes an issue. The cast is led by Johanna Wallroth's sparky Susanna and Louise Alder's radiant Countess. The latter delivers an immaculate account of Porgi amor and a poignantly staged Dove sono. Michael Nagl is an appealingly bumptious Figaro, Huw Montague Rendall a preening, raptor-like Count, and Adèle Charvet engaging and entirely convincing as the reluctantly cross-dressed Cherubino. As Bartolo and Marcelina, Alessandro Corbelli and Madeleine Shaw are surprisingly tender in the paternity scene, another of Clément's many thoughtful touches. At Glyndebourne until 21 August
Telegraph
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Glyndebourne abandons show after wind turbine fails to keep lights on
Power cuts compelled Glyndebourne to abandon a performance as the opera house's wind turbine offered little back-up in the still summer air. The production of Handel's Saul on Saturday was plagued by power outages before organisers pulled the plug on the whole show. Organisers said the production had been hit by six blackouts while the audience was present, each requiring a 15-minute pause to restart the stage technology. A spokesman for Glyndebourne told The Telegraph: 'Three of the power cuts happened during the long interval, which meant we were able to minimise the impact. However, the continued instability of power after the interval made it impractical to continue. 'Our teams, on and off stage, are working at their peak. Repeated stops and restarts become untenable and even unsafe, and compromise the performance we are able to deliver.' The performance of Saul was abandoned minutes before the final curtain. 'As we left, I gazed up at Glyndebourne's solitary but enormous wind turbine, magnificently motionless in the still and balmy evening air,' an attendee told Slipped Disc, a classical music publication. Glyndebourne was dependent on electricity from the grid at the time, as its turbine was not meeting the needs of demand and its short-term back-up generators were unable to cope with the length of the disruption. The spokesman said: 'Glyndebourne's wind turbine generates electricity equivalent to almost 100 per cent of our annual usage. While in the windier winter months it generates an excess to our needs, daily supply does not meet demand at the height of summer. 'We aspire to be energy self-sufficient in the future and are already reviewing the investments and infrastructure needed to make this possible. This is now a heightened priority. We are now working to increase our resilience in this area.' 'Wind power can never provide for all our wants' Technical difficulties also delayed the final scene of Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) at Glyndebourne on Sunday evening. The organisers said Sunday's problem was still under investigation. The country house's 230ft Enercon wind turbine, on a hill overlooking the opera house in the heart of the South Downs National Park, was launched by Sir David Attenborough in January 2012. 'Wind power can never provide for all our wants but every bit of power generated by wind must be welcomed,' he said at the time, adding: 'Even if we only generate a fraction of what our country needs in this way, then we must.' Between 2012 and 2023, the turbine is said to have generated the equivalent of 102 per cent of electricity used by the company in the same period, resulting in a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions. Prof Tony Parker, a retired engineer, led protests against the wind turbine before its installation, claiming the 900KW unit would be one of the most inefficient in the country, only generating power 17 per cent of the time.
Times
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Andy Burnham fares well at Glastonbury — but winter is coming for PM
Andy Burnham may not have made the most headlines from Glastonbury, but many in Westminster will have found his performance there the most interesting. The mayor of Greater Manchester told the famously sober music festival about his opposition to the welfare bill and his hope that Labour MPs 'think carefully before they vote'. This blatant challenge to Keir Starmer has been noticed in London, as rumours swirl about Burnham's Westminster ambitions and, as ever with him, there's a flavour of Game of Thrones. Wagging tongues say that the so-called King in the North will be looking to speed up his march south this autumn. Starmer may feel that winter is coming. David Cameron was among partiers at the 60th birthday weekend of David Ross, co-founder of the Carphone Warehouse and Tory donor, who had guests wear lederhosen for an Austrian night and then black tie for a dinner the following evening. However, the jollity was added to when another ex-PM got the evenings mixed up and consequently looked like the lonely goatherd in a sea of dinner jackets. No prizes for guessing which ex-PM this was, but he of all people knows that when the goatherd moves, it moves. Glyndebourne couldn't give a Figaro on Sunday as the opera house's revolve broke, delaying the performance beyond the last train and leaving the audience stranded in the wilds of Sussex. It capped off a difficult weekend for the festival as Saturday night's Saul was abandoned after multiple power cuts. Some patrons took grim satisfaction as they have never warmed to the wind turbine which has been on site for 13 years. Annually, it generates the equivalent of 105 per cent of Glyndebourne's electricity but, sadly for a summer festival, is not much help on a still June night. Perhaps the soprano can blow on it. It's easy to forget that those great chums George Osborne and Ed Balls used to be chalk and cheese, but differences remain between the former chancellor and his shadow. After a mention of Mr Kipling cakes on their Political Currency podcast garnered a free sample, Balls started extolling Domino's in the hope of free pizza. Osborne cottoned on to this game, but rather more ambitiously. 'I quite like driving a Ferrari,' he said. 'And I'm a big fan of Bordeaux wine.' It is yet to be seen if there will be free claret for this former blue. • 'Suella's almost proposing marriage': Nigel Farage eyes the dispatch box Back on the subject of politicians' dress, Nigel Farage has been sporting what some thought to be a new Reform tie, but the dash of turquoise is actually a way of sucking up to his constituents at the Frinton Cricket Club. I'm told by denizens of East Anglia that Farage may have been drawn to the FCC for its 'well-appointed clubhouse bar and convivial atmosphere'. They also hope his fame may give the town a different reputation, admitting that it is best known for its 1970s appearance in signage for North Sea Ferries. On the sign which read 'Harwich for the continent', someone added 'Frinton for the incontinent'.
Times
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Le nozze di Figaro review — raw emotional power from a top-notch cast
We are told The Marriage of Figaro has been performed 588 times at Glyndebourne. My memories don't quite go back to 1934, but I cannot recall seeing any Figaro here with as much detail — either in depicting the upstairs-downstairs bustle of an 18th-century aristocrat's home or in the grippingly nuanced acting — that Mariame Clément obtains in this new staging. Part of that is down to immaculate historical research. The set's wall paintings and the costumes, whether for gentry or yokels, are derived from the pastel-shaded landscapes of Louis Carrogis Carmontelle (an apt inspiration, as he painted a famous portrait of the boy Mozart), with a nod to Fragonard's The Swing in the final act. And Julia Hansen's sets continually revolve to reveal everything from boudoirs to boot rooms, with handfuls of household servants constantly popping up. • Read more classical reviews, guides and interviews Of course a revolving stage is always a hostage to fortune. This one broke down for 20 minutes before Act IV — a hiatus just long enough to cause many of the first-night audience to miss the last London train. It also slightly dissipated the raw emotional power that Clément coaxes from an excellent cast as they brutally expose the fissures tearing apart the marriage of Huw Montague Rendall's vicious, caddish Count and Louise Alder's clearly terrified Countess. And brutal is the word. Their blazing Act II row must be hard to watch for anyone in the audience who has experienced domestic violence. It's all the more effective because Alder, who sings sumptuously throughout, never misses a note — even with Rendall wringing her neck. And though there's plenty of ripe comedy elsewhere, that scene has an ominous impact that cascades through to the end, which is far from feel-good. Elsewhere, too, there is fine singing and vivid characterisation. Michael Nagl's Figaro is a lumbering giant, big in voice and heart but perhaps not in brain, constantly needing prodding from Johanna Wallroth's delightfully animated Susanna. Another Glyndebourne newcomer, the French mezzo Adèle Charvet sings Cherubino with a notably sonorous tone. And the seasoned Alessandro Corbelli and Madeleine Shaw milk plenty of laughs as Bartolo and Marcellina. About the conducting I have more reservations. Riccardo Minasi certainly puts a sophisticated stamp on every bar, and the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment do many beautiful things. But the basic tempos are often a notch too slow, then bizarrely slowed further for dramatic emphasis. Sometimes a conductor needs to get out of the way and let Mozart's miraculous score do its work.★★★★☆290min (includes dinner interval) To Aug 21, @timesculture to read the latest reviews
Telegraph
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Marriage of Figaro, Glyndebourne: No new insights but buckets of charm
Ninety-one years since Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), opened the old opera house at Glyndebourne (and 52 years since I first saw the opera there, but let that pass), Mozart's sublime opera buffa is still core to the festival's repertory. Its new staging, by French director Mariame Clément, will surely provide a banker for the future: it is charming, clever and extremely well-sung, while offering absolutely no new insights into this greatest and most subtle of comedies. When Clément directed Mozart's Don Giovanni here two seasons ago, the result was an incoherent jumble of ideas. Here, she has moved in the opposite direction and produced instead a direct telling of this tale of the follies of a single day, on which the servants Susanna and Figaro aim to get married, but the wiles of Count Almaviva stand in their way. The cross-class alliance of the unhappy Countess with Susanna in order to humiliate the Count provides a rich source of disguise and deception, but social commentary is missing here. Julia Hansen's design of interlocking curved rooms provides an elegantly post-baroque setting (though problems with the movement of the revolving stage caused a delay in act four on opening night), as we see the spaces of the chateau unfold with Paule Constable's occasionally surreal lighting. Clement gives each character a signature: Marcellina (Madeleine Shaw), who claims Figaro's hand, vulgarly munches fruit; Don Basilio (Ru Charlesworth), who gleefully observes the confusions, has the sniffles. Some ideas are cute: an inserted game of musical chairs interrupts the wedding scene; while Cherubino (the ardent Adèle Charvet), the well-behaved child of the Countess whose writing provides the source of the letter duet, makes a nervous false start to his famous aria Voi che sapete. The spectacle of Huw Montague Rendall's Count emerging from his bath makes a vivid opening to Act III: he is lithe and forceful in his big aria – quite fanciable, even, though not as much as he imagines himself to be, which will provide the root of the opera's closing scene. We are unlikely to hear the Countess's aria Dove sono sung better in our day than by Louise Alder, gloriously focused and resonant; Johanna Wallroth's Susanna is chirpy rather than cheeky, but her voice is nicely sharp-edged. Barbarina's one aria is perfectly done by Elisabeth Boudreault. At the centre of proceedings, Michael Nagl's good-humoured Figaro produces some lovely tone in his act four aria and finale. Riccardo Minasi's jumpy, stop-start conducting of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment produced an uneasy first half on opening night and only settled down in the second half: Minasi attempts rhythmic flexibility, which is admirable, often slowing down arias before the end, then racing to the finish. But that should not be at the expense of continuity and flow, which was fatally missing from the tremendous Act II finale. This is a harmless, amusing Figaro, which will delight audiences – but surely we expect more from Glyndebourne.
