Festival 2027 runs from 20 May to 29 August, with new productions of Jenufa, La Cenerentola and Idomeneo, all three by directors making their Festival debut.
John Christie built an opera house onto the side of his Sussex country house in 1934 because he had married a soprano, Audrey Mildmay, and wanted somewhere to hear her sing. He hired refugees from Nazi Germany to run it. Almost a century later Glyndebourne is the most idiosyncratic serious opera house in Europe: no public subsidy, black tie by convention rather than rule, an early curtain, a ninety-minute dining interval and a lawn where the picnic is genuinely the second half of the evening.
The rest of it is a company that takes real risks with casting and gives young singers the parts the international houses would not, which is why the audience returns and why the reputation has outlived the eccentricity. The tour, which takes productions to towns with no opera house, is funded out of the Festival and is the part nobody sees.
Festival 2027 runs from 20 May to 29 August across three centuries of repertoire, on three new productions, each by a director making a Festival debut: Yael Farber takes Janáček’s Jenůfa, Max Webster arrives from the West End and Broadway for Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and Mozart’s Idomeneo goes to the house’s own artistic director. Three debuts in one season is the real decision here, because the house style is what every new director gets measured against and it has outlasted most of them.