Glyndebourne Festival Opera

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This article is about the Glyndebourne opera festival. See Glyndebourne for details of the country house and opera house

Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an opera festival held at Glyndebourne, a country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.

Under the supervision of the Christie family, the festival has been held annually since 1934, except in 1993, when the theatre was being rebuilt. The renovated theatre opened in 1994. Gus Christie, son of Sir George Christie and grandson of festival founder John Christie, became festival chairman in 2000.^[1]

Glyndebourne is most famous for its productions of Mozart operas; many of those productions are considered the finest ever done of those operas in the twentieth century, and the recordings from those stagings are still in print.

In the late 1980s, the Glyndebourne Festival staged a new production of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess". It was directed by Trevor Nunn, and was highly acclaimed. The production was subsequently expanded from the small Glyndebourne stage and videotaped in 1993 for television. Trevor Nunn again directed.

In recent years Mozart has continued to the mainstay of its repertory, but the company has received particular acclaim for its outstanding productions of Janacek and Handel operas.

The primary resident orchestra for the Glyndebourne Festival is the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The festival's associate orchestra is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Since January 2001, the festival's music director is Vladimir Jurowski.^[2] ^[3]

David Pickard is the general director of the festival. The festival operates without subsidy. Its first placement of advertisements was in 2003.^[4]