Theatre News

A mix of new productions and revivals for Glyndebourne 2014

Next summer the Sussex Downs will once again be alive to the sound of music – and the pop of champagne corks

Mark Valencia
Handel's Rinaldo, Glyndebourne 2011
Handel’s Rinaldo, Glyndebourne 2011
© Bill Cooper

Diaries out: it’s already time to start planning for next year’s round of summer festivals. Here, hot and sunny off the press, is a first look of what the Glyndebourne Festival has in store for operagoers in 2014.

The 2014 Festival opens on 17 May with a new production of Richard Strauss’s ultra-romantic Der Rosenkavalier, directed by Richard Jones with Robin Ticciati conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Kate Royal will sing the Feldmarschallin with Tara Erraught as Octavian and Teodora Gheorghiu (no relation to Angela; their shared surname is quite common in their native Romania) making her Glyndebourne début in the role of Sophie.

Leading from the front in his first Glyndebourne Festival as Music Director, the 30-year-old whizz-kid Ticciati will also conduct the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Glyndebourne’s first ever production of Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, to be directed by Frederic Wake-Walker. Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke will sing the role of Don Anchise, with Christiane Karg as Sandrina and Gyula Orendt as Nardo.

The third in 2014’s trio of new productions will be Verdi’s La Traviata, directed by Tom Cairns with Sir Mark Elder conduct the LPO. The consumptive courtesan Violetta will be performed by a newcomer to the south coast festival, Russian soprano Venera Gimadieva.

There will be revivals of three more tried and tested Glyndebourne favourites. Omer Meir Wellber will make his UK début conducting the LPO in Graham Vick’s 1994 production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Andrei Bondarenko and Ekaterina Scherbachenko, who sang Marcello and Mimì in the 2012 production of Puccini’s La bohème, will play Onegin and Tatyana.

Jonathan Kent’s dynamic and much-admired 2010 staging of Mozart’s Don Giovanni returns with Elliot Madore in the title role, following his UK début as Ramiro in last year’s Glyndebourne staging of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole. Andrés Orozco-Estrada will conduct the LPO.

Handel’s Rinaldo is a cracker to round off the season. Ottavio Dantone will return to conduct the OAE in Robert Carsen’s mischievously entertaining production; but this time round the title role, so dazzlingly taken in 2011 by Sonia Prina, will be sung by a counter-tenor, Iestyn Davies. He will be joined by three more distinguished exponents of the falsettist’s art, Tim Mead, Anthony Roth Costanzo and James Laing.