Welcome to the Glyndebourne Summer Festival edition of our newsletter
We are very excited to be hosting our first opera screenings in partnership with Glyndebourne and Picturehouse Entertainment.
Glyndebourne in Sussex is one of the world's premiere opera houses, their Summer Festival celebrates world class music and theatre at its best and is one of the major cultural highlights of the UK arts calendar.
This year's festival opens on the 4th June with a live broadcast of Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski and continues with works by Verdi, Mozart, Jean- Philippe Rameau, Donizetti and Benjamin Britten throughout June, July and August.
View the Summer Festival cinema trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzuWyHHxvHs&list=UUwivpipDHAYT-jKVi7rdWJA&index=3
Please scroll down to find details on each opera.
All our Gyndebourne Summer Festival broadcasts will take place at The Attfield Theatre, The Guildhall, Bailey Head, Oswestry, SY11 1PZ.
Parking is available on the Horsemarket Car Park within a couple of minutes walking distance from The Guildhall.
SEASON TICKET & BOOKING INFORMATION:
Tickets for these screenings cost £12.00 Adults/£10.00 under 16's
Or take advantage of our special Glyndebourne Season Ticket Offer:
Season tickets offering all six screenings for the price of five are available with advance payment.
To book tickets please call the kinokulture cinema box office 0845 2500517 (local rate)
or email: info@kinokulture.org.uk
*** Please note that the start times vary for each screening so please check dates and times for each event.
The interval will last for approximately 30 minutes, light refreshments will be on sale or alternatively why not bring your own Glyndebourne inspired picnic?
| | |  | Ariadne auf Naxos
by
Richard Strauss
(Live Broadcast)
Tuesday 4th June
The Attfield Theatre
Doors open 6:30pm
Live Broadcast 7:00pm
Composer: | Richard Strauss | | | Librettist: | Hugo von Hofmannsthal | Conductor: | Vladimir Jurowski | Director: | Katharina Thoma | Cast: | Thomas Allen, Soile Isokoski, Kate Lindsey | Run Time: | 165 mins |
The 2013 Festival opens with a new production of this compelling and intricately crafted collaboration between composer Richard Strauss and writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. After the enormous success of Der Rosenkavalier, the two men conceived the idea of a light entertainment, a small trifle to amuse and divert the public.
It soon became altogether more complex, subtle and ambitious, ‘something unusual and important’ as von Hofmannsthal put it, with ‘music as enchanting in the memory as anything could be; like fireworks in a beautiful park, one enchanted, all too fleeting, summer night’. The kernel of the story is a clash between two different types of dramatic performance, as represented by a troupe of comic artists led by the irrepressible Zerbinetta, and the high seriousness of the classical myth of Ariadne; roles sung by Laura Claycomb and Soile Isokoski, both making their Glyndebourne debuts. In Vladimir Jurowski’s final season as Music Director he will conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra in his first fully-staged Strauss opera, working with the German director Katharina Thoma, making her UK debut.
The trailer for Ariadne auf Naxos can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/user/Glyndebourne | |  | Falstaff
by
Giuseppi Verdi
(recorded live at Glyndebourne 2009)
Tuesday 18th June
The Attfield Theatre
Doors open 5:45pm
Screening 6:15pm
Composer: | Giuseppe Verdi | Librettist: | Arrigo Boito after the play by William Shakespeare | Conductor: | Vladimir Jurowski | Director: | Richard Jones | Cast: | Christopher Purves, Tassis Christoyannis, Dina Kuznetsova, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Jennifer Holloway, Bülent Bezdüz, Adriana Kučerová | Run Time: | 185 mins |
Throughout his long career, Verdi longed to find a good subject for a comic opera. Towards the very end of it he found that subject, in the vast and jovial shape of Shakespeare’s John Falstaff.
The result is indeed a triumph, and joyously life-affirming. This revival of the production by Richard Jones, first seen at Glyndebourne in 2009, places the action firmly in Windsor with recognisably English characters. ‘It’s a clever conceit,’ said The Observer, ‘brilliantly executed by the designer Ultz, whose sharp eye for detail, authentic and witty, is part of the charm.’
View the trailer for Falstaff here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxbiT2mqIE | |  | Le nozze di Figaro
By
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(recorded live at Glyndebourne 2012)
Tuesday 9th July
The Attfield Theatre
Doors open 5:45pm
Screening 6:15pm
Composer: | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | | | Librettist: | Lorenzo Da Ponte | Conductor: | Robin Ticciati | Director: | Michael Grandage | Cast: | Sally Matthews, Vito Priante, Auden Iversen, Lydia Teuscher, Isabel Leonard | Run Time: | 225 mins |
Michael Grandage’s production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro is one of rare grace, naturalness and charm’, said The Daily Telegraph, and for The Sunday Times it was a production that ‘affirms Mozart’s most beloved masterpiece as both of its time and perennially modern, Grandage oiling the comic mechanisms of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto with a master technician’s hands.’ Mozart’s music is both exquisitely beautiful and painfully perceptive in the depths of its characterisation. The vulnerability of the Countess is laid bare, as is the predicament of Figaro and Susanna, forced to rely on their wits in a household where they are members of staff, in thrall to a master with no moral compass and low levels of boredom. During the course of one mad day, tables are turned and expectations dashed; disguises are either penetrated or turn out to be disconcertingly successful; the plots of Bartolo and Marcellina are frustrated, the marriage of Figaro and Susanna is off again, on again, and ultimately, the Count is thwarted and humbled by the Countess’s forgiveness.
The opera has particular significance as it was the first opera ever to be performed at Glyndebourne in 1934, with founder John Christie’s wife and co-founder Audrey Mildmay in the role of Susanna. View the trailer for Le nozze de Figaro here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW923YnZRp4&list=UUwivpipDHAYT-jKVi7rdWJA&index=10 | |  | Hippolyte et Aricie
By
Jean Philippe-Rameau
(Live Broadcast)
Thursday 25th July
The Attfield Theatre
Doors open 5:45pm
Live Broadcast 6:15pm
Composer: | Jean-Phillipe Rameau | | | Librettist: | Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, based on Jean Racine's tragedy Phèdre | Conductor: | William Christie | Director: | Jonathan Kent | Cast: | Ed Lyon, Christiane Karg, Sarah Connolly, Stéphanie D’Oustrac | Run Time: | 225 mins | When Rameau died in 1764, the Mercure de France concluded its epitaph to him with the words ‘Here lies the God of Harmony’. In many ways he defined 18th-century French music, publishing his widely influential Treaty on Harmony in 1722. He was known as the leading music theorist of his time and as the composer of numerous works for the keyboard before he made a thrilling late career shift and turned his hand to opera.
Hippolyte et Aricie was Rameau’s first work for the stage, written when he was nearly 50. It is also Glyndebourne’s first opera by Rameau and will strike audiences, as it did in Paris in 1733, with its richness of invention. This production reunites the team who created such a dazzling entertainment with Purcell’s The Fairy Queen: conductor William Christie (Jonathan Cohen August 4, 8, 13, 18), a leading exponent of the Baroque repertoire, director Jonathan Kent and designer Paul Brown. They are joined by choreographer Ashley Page making his Glyndebourne debut. Dance is integral to this opera, acting as a counterpoint to the unfolding story of a woman who falls in love with her stepson, a man who jumps to the wrong conclusions and is pursued by fate, and the uncertain destiny of two young lovers. Rameau drew on ancient Greek tragedy and 17th-century classical French drama to create a version of the story of Theseus, Phaedra and Hippolytus that is his own unique construct. In a welcome return to Glyndebourne, the pivotal role of Phèdre is performed by Sarah Connolly. | |  | Don Pasquale
By
Gaetano Donizetti
(Live Broadcast)
Tuesday 6th August
The Attfield Theatre
Doors open 6:45pm
Live Broadcast 7:15pm
Composer: | Gaetano Donizetti | | | Librettist: | Giovanni Ruffini | Conductor: | Enrique Mazzola | Director: | Mariame Clément | Cast List: | Alessandro Corbelli, Nikolay Borchev, Alek Shrader, Danielle de Niese | Run Time: | 165 mins | Donizetti was an enormously prolific composer – Don Pasquale is the 64th of his 66 operas, and was written only a year before the onset of the syphilis-induced dementia that was eventually to overwhelm him. In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that the diamond-bright wit and brilliance of this opera also has a distinctly dark side. Don Pasquale is a man no longer in the first flush of youth who nonetheless hopes to marry and produce an heir, being dissatisfied with the current holder of that position, his nephew Ernesto. He intends to disinherit Ernesto, who has had the temerity to fall in love with Norina, an impoverished widow. The plot thickens, twists and turns from this point, as Pasquale’s supposed friend, Doctor Malatesta, assists Ernesto and Norina in a complex and increasingly vindictive deception. Following her acclaimed debut as Adina in the 2011 Festival production of L’elisir d’amore, Danielle de Niese continues her exploration of Donizetti, performing the role of Norina. The celebrated Italian baritone Alessandro Corbelli sings the title role. When Mariame Clément’s production, designed by Julia Hansen, first appeared on the Glyndebourne Tour in 2011, The Daily Telegraph hailed it as an ‘astute and elegant staging […] depicting a bitter, poignant comedy of human folly’ and for The Independent on Sunday it was ‘a Don Pasquale with an edge; peppery and pungent’. | |  | Billy Budd
By
Benjamin Britten
(Recorded live at Glyndebourne 2010)
Tuesday 20th August
The Attfield Theatre
Doors open 5:45pm
Screening 6:15pm
Composer: | Benjamin Britten | | | Librettist: | Herman Melville | Conductor: | Sir Mark Elder | Director: | Michael Grandage | Cast: | John Mark Ainsley, Jacques Imbrailo, Phillip Ens | Run Time: | 205 mins | This year marks the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten, born suitably enough on 22 November, the feast day of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music. His powerfully dramatic opera Billy Budd returns to Glyndebourne with Jacques Imbrailo in the title role and Mark Padmore making his role debut as Captain Vere.
The tense and stifling atmosphere on board a British man of war during the Napoleonic wars, with discipline brutally enforced and danger of attack ever present, is powerfully evoked in this production by Michael Grandage. With the fear of mutiny always at the back of officers’ minds, crew members below deck were obliged to obey orders instantly and without question. As John Masefield, author of Sea Life in Nelson’s Time, put it: ‘A captain of a ship at sea was not only a commander, but a judge of the supreme court, and a kind of human parallel to deity. He lived alone, like a little god in heaven, shrouded from view by the cabin bulkheads, and guarded always by a red-coated sentry, armed with a drawn sword.’ But what happens when the human deity is crippled by doubt? When he is forced to make a terrible decision over life and death? Britten and his librettists E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier present a situation where a man’s innocence, a shining goodness as embodied in the character of Billy, is not enough to save him. And at the heart of it all lies an insinuating emotional ambiguity, making this opera a deeply disturbing and unforgettable experience.
View the trailer for Billy Budd here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJbdlq9n_yM&list=UUwivpipDHAYT-jKVi7rdWJA&index=11 | | Our regular screenings will of course continue throughout the summer including, the French language film 'In The House', legendary director Park Chan Wook's first English language film 'Stoker' and Spanish director Pedro Almodavar's new comedy 'I'm So Excited!' all coming up in June and our first 3D screening coming in August.
Please visit our web site to keep up to date:
http://www.kinokulture.org.uk/
And look out for our June newsletter coming soon.
We look forward to seeing you at kinokulture cinema this summer.
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