From biscuit tins to blockbusters, the Seven Sisters and their surrounding landscape are familiar totems, as is the accompanying orchestral swell designed to sweep us away on a tide of patriotism. Cuckmere: A Portrait doesn’t do that.
One thing that is often forgotten during this season of solemn remembrance is quite how easy it is to find yourself at war. Nobody expects to go to war, but for those who do, the conflict lasts for life.
Evacuees escaping the blitz arrive in Lewes by train while, in the present day, a group of teenagers in a refugee camp prepare to risk everything to complete their journey.
With a new era dawning as Sebastian Schwarz takes over as General Director, what better way to open the season than with David McVicar’s seminal Meistersinger, a hymn to what opera – and Glyndebourne – does best.
With the green lanes of Sussex foaming with cow parsley and blackthorn blossom, and afternoon programme of youthful exuberance, was entirely appropriate, with occasional diversions into the mellow fruitfulness that more reflected the Glyndebourne audience and the Takács themselves - at it since 1975.
Iphigénie en Tauride is a tricky opera to follow, much of the drama having already unfolded before the beginning.
When Ibsen’s classic play about a whistle-blower gets five major productions in eight years, you can be sure there’s something in the water.
The long summer holiday is over. The children return excitedly to school with tales of foreign adventure and self discovery.
