Breaking: Glyndebourne will perform indoors

Press release:

Glyndebourne has announced plans for a ‘staycation’ series of socially-distanced indoor performances, starting on 10 October 2020.

The events are in place of the company’s annual autumn tour which was due to start at Glyndebourne on 9 October and visit Canterbury, Woking, Milton Keynes, Liverpool and Norwich before returning home for Christmas concerts. The ongoing restrictions on the size and scale of indoor performances mean that it is no longer possible to present the season as planned. Instead Glyndebourne will remain in Sussex with a programme of indoor concerts and small-scale opera in front of a reduced audience.

The autumn season opens with Glyndebourne’s new production of In the Market for Love, a new version by Stephen Plaice of Jacques Offenbach’s Mesdames de la Halle. It became the first full-length opera to be performed to a live audience since lockdown when it premiered in the Glyndebourne gardens at the start of August. It will be followed by performances of a reduced, semi-staged version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute and five festive Christmas Concerts.

Stephen Langridge, Glyndebourne’s Artistic Director, said: ‘For more than 50 years the Glyndebourne Tour has been a crucial part of our artistic programme, allowing us to bring world-class opera to thousands of people around the country, and continue our commitment to talent development. We are deeply disappointed that the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented us from going on the road this year, but we remain determined to find ways to keep performing. We have learned many useful lessons about how to present opera in a way that’s safe for audiences and performers throughout this summer’s special and memorable run of concerts and opera in our gardens, and now we are excited to be able to apply this knowledge and welcome audiences back into our beautiful opera house for the touring equivalent of a “staycation”.’

Good for them.