![]() ![]() Charity Tillemann-Dick: Singer who drew music from transplanted lungs.La damnation de Faust review: An extraordinary work.A true family dynasty, it is run by Gus Christie, the affable grandson of the founder John Christie (John’s son and Gus’s father Sir George Christie ran the show in between). It is an unforgettable sight on the meandering South Downs. Bigger than all its rivals and with many decades more history, with its lake, meadows, more species of flowers than one can name, and, almost inevitably, a croquet lawn. Others go to local friends of the Grahams, who take in the tenants for a couple of free tickets.Īnd then there is the daddy of them all, Glyndebourne. Some are billeted in their house, where one of Lizzie’s many tasks is to supervise the sheet changing. There’s a real feeling of everyone mucking in.”Īnd, of course, like other country house operas they have to find accommodation for the singers. I’ve found Lizzie scrubbing toilets clean. One top international soprano who was there for a season recalled: “The atmosphere is just so different. Martin Graham, now well into his seventies, started his opera festival in his cowshed in 1991 and has run it with his wife Lizzie before now handing over the reins, in true country house opera dynastic style, to their daughter Polly.Īt Longborough, as with the other small country house operas, no one is too grand to muck in. If Getty comes from a particularly eccentric family, he has a rival in that department in the particularly brilliant founder of Longborough Opera, beautifully situated in the heart of the Cotswolds. ![]() They also have the pleasure of watching a performance in one of the only opera houses in the world that receives the daylight for its opening couple of hours, the performance rather magically becoming more intense as night falls. The cricket pitch has sported such part-time cricketers as Getty’s chum Mick Jagger. But they do have the pleasure of entering the estate by motoring down the long drive to the lake and the cricket pitch next to the opera house, with the marquees alongside it serving as interval restaurants. Mark Getty, one of the world’s richest men, is somewhat reclusive, and not always in this country, so unlikely to be spotted by opera-goers. Complete with historic walled gardens, a 300-year old orchard filled with mulberry, damson, apple and pear trees and a sprawling ancient house, its five-tiered opera house is the only opera house built in Britain this century
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