A peek behind the Glyndebourne theatre curtain

Gaze outwards to the 1,200 seats in the auditorium, to the three boxes from where the supertitles and lights and projections are triggered, and it’s no wonder, on the odd occasion, lyrics are forgotten. Legend has it one British singer once forgot his lines when faced with opera-goers.

“It was a Czech opera and he was heard to be singing Martina Navratilova over and over again,” explains Rich Joyner, who worked in the Glyndebourne box office before being tasked with leading tours around the Sussex opera house, which celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2014.

Joyner has the decency to spare the singer’s blushes by declaring his name, before clarifying “he was still keeping his melody line but the lyrics had gone out of the window.”

Whether anyone in the audience would spot the odd wrong line if they were following the words, screened in English above the stage during productions, is another matter.

In truth, opera singers know the roles inside out before they arrive for rehearsals. There is no sitting about making notes on a script during preparation as is an actors’ way.

When Pavarotti made his British stage debut in Mozart’s Idomeneo at Glyndebourne in 1964 he might have not been a household name but he’d have been consummate professional.

“Part of ethos here is about developing new talent,” says Joyner, “we don’t have star names and we don’t pitch a show on the back of a Pavarotti. It’s a collegiate ethos and all the singers are expected to work for a six-week rehearsal time. There are no singers straight off the plane from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. We are in the Sussex Downs, not in busy London.”

Despite the sprawling backstage space, singers come because they like the intimacy. When the late Sir George Christie decided to build a new opera house 20 years ago he made sure the distance from the stage to the back wall was less than it was in the old building. The old building had been in use since 1934 and had grown from 300 seats to a creaking 850-seat house with no air conditioning. Not only does the new auditorium’s horseshoe shape make the performers feel close to the audience but it also helps with acoustics for singers who never use microphones.

As Joyner takes The Guide on one of the opera house’s open tours he says visitors are always surprised by how close to the audience the singer must feel, “but the singers love that intimacy.”

All that separates audience and performer is the orchestra pit and a net (to stop objects and, very occasionally, singers rolling off stage).

Unlike many opera houses, Glyndebourne has no prompt for its singers. Some venues have a three-sided box hidden in the pit where a prompt sits mouthing words to performers. “Here we don’t have that. If performance forgets lines they are on their own.”

Help comes via screens mounted to the stage arch instead of the conductor. Staring at several screens rather than the musical leader sounds daunting, but the toughest job in an opera house is off stage: prompt corner, stage left, where the deputy stage manager’s desk stands.

It looks like the inside of a cockpit. Wires sprout from a stacked box of electronics surrounded by screens and the score. The job of running a show sounds as complex as flying a plane.

“You need nerves of steel to be deputy stage manager and prompt corner is the hub of any production,” reveals Joyner.

“A stage manager and a deputy stage manager, who must be able to read music, are assigned to a production right from the beginning and sit in on every single rehearsal.

“The deputy stage manager will be making notes on the cues, lighting, technical and sound effects, which are all being fed into the production. They’ll have a copy of the score, which will build over a rehearsal. Then during the show they will be in charge of cueing sound, lighting and off-stage singers.”

Making it run smoothly is the aim. But things don’t always run according to plan.

A few years after moving into the new house there was a problem during a production of Carmen. The show was building to the climatic final scene when Don Jose murders Carmen.

Don Jose was cued from the desk but he didn’t turn up. He got a second and a third cue and the action on stage was rapidly moving on. It was right up to the wire and everyone was getting panicky – and the assistant stage manager was stood by the props table with the knife with which Don Jose was to kill Carmen. Then in Don Jose rushed, heading straight onto the stage to start singing but forgetting to pick up his knife.

“Carmen was strangled that night,” laughs Joyner, as we make our way deeper backstage, “It caused quite a shock for her and added to the dramatic effect.”

We walk through a sprawling hanger-like space with huge painted canvases ready to be pulled up and down by flymen high up on galleries, working like bell ringers, teasing the counterweight in time with the music.

From here it’s easy to see how 130 people fitted on stage for the final scene in the 2011 production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. It’s even easier to see how entire sets are wheeled in and out during the 24-hour operation which is Glyndebourne’s summer season, with as many as four different shows being performed back to back and in rotation.

Behind a giant iron door are drawbridges and pulleys and old props. A huge chandelier from a recent production of Don Giovanni, part of a show based around a giant revolving cube which could open up into a house and a graveyard, sits ready. Further on, outside, is a platform built into the floor which can be lowered to allow entire sets to be wheeled in and out and straight off lorries. There are two more rehearsal spaces big enough to hold full-size sets mirroring everything a singer will face on stage except the trap door. “If a production is going to be revived - which we hope most will be - the sets are put into storage. We have large facility here and one near Chiddingly. Some productions from the 1980s are still in cycle and sets might be repainted or redone and we’ll always try to reuse them.”

That’s good business as well as being environmentally conscious: one production can cost £250,000 to put together. In total, the 2014 summer season cost £16.6m.

As well as the new house our tour takes in the Elizabethan-style Green Room which was commissioned by John Christie in 1936. A recent floor restoration revealed toys and letters penned by evacuees who holed up there in the Second World War.

The Christie family took ownership of Woods Tenement In The Hole Opera in the 1830s and soon changed its name to Glyndebourne. More than a hundred years had passed before John Christie created Glyndebourne Festival.

John, who had staged musical soirees and amateur efforts in the elegant Organ Room, had fallen in love with a singer he hired for The Abduction From The Seraglio.

“He was eccentric and clearly reckless,” jokes Joyner, as he reveals how Christie had his functioning appendix removed so he could lay beside his love Audrey Mildmay who had been rushed into hospital on a German holiday.

These German adventures – and in particular Wagner’s Bayreuth Festival – inspired Glyndebourne Festival.

John’s son Sir George, who passed away earlier this year, took over in 1962. His first appearance on stage was in Audrey’s womb as she sung soprano during the first production of La Nozze Di Figaro (The Marriage Of Figaro) in 1934.

One of Sir George’s legacies is the Glyndebourne Tour, which opens tomorrow with performances of Verdi’s La Traviata before Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera and Benjamin Britten’s The Turn Of The Screw open in the rotating schedule. Sir George also took the decision in mid 1980s to build the new theatre.

“He was determined it had to happen. He set up the fundraising and raised money. The last season in old theatre was 1992 and it finished with a gala concert.

“At the end the artist took his bows then the orchestra struck up the overture to The Marriage Of Figaro, which was the same piece as the opening show. It was beautiful moment which bookended the building.”

Behind the scenes

In an outbuilding behind the opera house I’m greeted by the chatter and whirr of sewing machines.

A dozen women are busy, slicing and cutting and stitching in silence, tailoring outfits for 2014 Glyndebourne Tour productions La Traviata and La Finta Giadinaira.

Natalie Weber, senior cutter, says they make 80 new costumes in each season and alter and reuse as many as 500 costumes from old productions. A suit might take 60 to 80 hours to make.

“We are the connecting point from the designer and creative side to the stage. We translate their ideas into costumes. We are the craft side.”

The team work nine months of the year and begin on a new production about eight weeks before it opens. They come up with initial outlines then fit and spend five weeks finishing.

“We need to understand what the designer, director and stage designer want and to get the feeling for it. What period and what world it should be.”

The 2013 production Hippolyte et Aricie was set in a fridge.

“That was unusual and really challenging,” she smiles. “We had to make spiders and feathery costumes and leather jackets. It was amazing we always say we are so privileged to work here in these surroundings.”

Patience is the key, apparently.

“Tailoring can be really hard work because needs to be so accurate and everything needs to be symmetrical. Tailors are a bit more serious. We cannot chat around!”

A short walk over the road from costumes building is a workshop run by Paul Brown.

With its lathes and workbenches mixed with tricycles, old suitcases and a bizarre and colourful mongrel bird made for La Finta Giardiniera, it looks like a school art and craft department.

Brown is a busy man – and he’s put together some enormous sets. The incredible Gingerbread House for Hänsel und Gretel in 2013 is most memorable. 

Over six months his team built thousands of oversize sweets.

“Making giant Haribo sweets is an expensive and laborious business. We had about 14 people working on that by the time we’d finished. But it was great to see and looked terrific.”
 

2014 Glyndebourne Tour by numbers

Hitting the road this year will be:

• 3 performances
• 19 soloists
• 36 chorus members
• 5 dancers and 1 actress
• 59 orchestral players plus their instruments, chairs, music stands and parts
• 130 music scores sent out to conductors, singers, chorus members and backstage staff plus 112 individual scores for orchestra players
• 11 trailers, each 13.4m long and travelling a total of 1236 miles each (13596 miles in total)
• 22 stage staff working two shifts per day, amounting to 1065 hours a week
• 225 costumes, 15 costume rails, more than 150 pairs of shoes, 70 wigs
• 2 washing machines, 1 twin tub washer, 2 tumble dryers, 40 litres of detergent, 20 litres of fabric softener, 4 wardrobe staff and 6 dressers.

Songs About Us
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, New Road, Sunday, October 5, Monday, October 6, Tuesday, October 7.

Families and schoolchildren have the chance to sing, act and direct with performers as they tackle songs by the world’s greatest songwriters.

Songs About Us is new musical show devised and directed by pianist, performer Dominic Harlan, who specialises in introducing children to opera and musical-theatre.

The show features soldiers, convicts, love and slapstick. It explores the gripping stories of eight different songs from some of the world’s greatest songwriters.

Harlan, devises projects for leading UK arts institutions including Glyndebourne, Wigmore Hall and Opera North.

The show is coming to Brighton Dome as part of the 2014 Glyndebourne Tour.

Sunday 3pm, Monday and Tuesday, 11am and 1pm (schools only). £6/£3 schools. Call 01273709709.

Essential Information

Glyndebourne, Lewes, East Sussex.

Glyndebourne Family Open Morning, Saturday, October 11, 10am to 1.30pm, £3 per person.

2014 Glyndebourne Tour with La Traviata, La Finta Giardiniera and The Turn Of The Screw, Saturday, October 4, to Sunday, October 26.

Tickets from £10 standing, £18 seating. For more information and to book tickets, visit www.glyndebourne.com.