Arts & Culture
May 2014Glyndeborne Opera Season
This world-class East Sussex opera festival presents the perfect opportunity to indulge in champagne picnics on summer lawns.
Dating back more than 70 years, Glyndebourne opera attracts thousands of opera-lovers from London and further afield, especially for its Mozart, Handel and Janácek, staged in the acoustically brilliant multi-million pound modern auditorium that opened in the 1990s.
Landowner John Christie, who inherited the historic country house (probably 16th-century), and his opera-singer wife Audrey Mildmay originally set up the festival as a showcase for small-scale productions of Mozart operas.
The London Philharmonic is the main resident orchestra for the duration of the festival. Operas are staggered throughout the summer months from May to August. They commence in the afternoon and are punctuated by a lengthy 90-minute interval during which dinner can be taken on the extensive lawns, in the form of a picnic, or in one of the restaurants within the grounds.
Picnics, which can be pre-ordered along with porter service and furniture if required, feature the likes of champagne, lobster salad and Glyndebourne summer pudding.
The 2014 Glyndebourne opera season features: Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, Verdi's La Traviata, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Handel's Rinaldo and Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.
