Glyndebourne Tour 2022

Posted by Chris Gregg at Thursday, 3 November 2022 23:03

A fresh new take on La Boheme leads the Glyndebourne Tour lineup as it returns to Milton Keynes Theatre this week.

TUE 1 NOV & FRI 4 NOV - The Marriage of Figaro
WED 2 NOV & SAT 5 NOV - La bohème
THU 3 NOV 2022 - The Anonymous Lover and Mozart's Requiem

Glyndebourne are making their annual visit to Milton Keynes Theatre with three different evenings of top quality opera entertainment featuring the popular La bohème and The Marriage of Figaro alongside a double bill of The Anonymous Lover and Mozart's Requiem.

The brand new production of Puccini’s La bohème, which opened to critical acclaim at Glyndebourne Festival this summer, takes to the road this autumn as part of the Glyndebourne Tour. The striking new staging by Dutch director Floris Visser was widely praised for its fresh take on an opera that is familiar to many.

Also touring is another five-star production from Glyndebourne – Michael Grandage’s popular 2012 staging of Mozart’s classic comedy The Marriage of Figaro.

Both of these productions are excellent, and have deserved their critical acclaim. With first class vocals, a superb live orchestra, imaginative staging and engaging performances, it's a great introduction to opera or a chance to enjoy a world-class production of a favourite show once again.

Continuing the Glyndebourne Tour’s longstanding commitment to supporting new artistic talent, the two shows have exciting new casts for this autumn. La bohème features rising star sopranos Nicaraguan-American Gabriella Reyes and Ethiopian-Italian Mariam Battistelli as Mimì and Musetta respectively.

The cast of The Marriage of Figaro includes Lancashire-born soprano Soraya Mafi (praised for her scene-stealing performance in this summer’s Glyndebourne Festival production of Alcina) as Susanna, George Humphreys as the roguish Count and Nardus Williams as his Countess. Taking up the baton for The Marriage of Figaro is talented young conductor Stephanie Childress, still only in her early twenties.

Alongside the two opera productions is a concert performance of Mozart’s Requiem, pairing his choral masterpiece with music by his contemporary, Caribbean-French composer Joseph Bologne, The Anonymous Lover.

The Anonymous Lover is a very clever production created by Simone Ibbett-Brown which tells the story of Joseph Bologne's life through readings of his powerful diaries as a group of singers rehearse his opera The Anonymous Lover. Real life mirrors art as the composer's unrequited love is reflected in the love triangle in the story, although in the opera, the story is resolved. The little known but inspiring story of Bologne's determination to rise to the top of society after being born the illegitimate son of an aristocrat and an enslaved plantation worker in French colonial Guadeloupe. Moving to Paris at the age of 7, he overcomes the attitudes of the time to his race as an accomplished fencer, talented musician and military leader. And his story is brought vividly to life in this production with a powerful and charismatic performance.

This is followed by a performance of Mozart's epic Requiem, which was unfinished at the time of his death in 1791. With the striking sound of the Glyndebourne orchestra and faultless vocals including some great solos, this is a definitive performance of the opera which will not disappoint.

Audience Engagement Programme

New for the Tour in 2022 is an exciting programme of community and audience engagement activity to accompany performances at each Tour venue. Glyndebourne is developing residencies in each Tour location throughout the year, creating bespoke learning and engagement projects in collaboration with its partners in the regions. These collaborations lead up to Resound, a programme of initiatives taking place in each venue alongside Glyndebourne’s mainstage Tour productions to welcome audiences, create a festival atmosphere and widen access to opera.

This year these include:

Good Company: music in care homes, in which performers from the Tour Orchestra and Chorus play a short, accessible programme for local groups of people living with dementia and their carers;
Sing with the Glyndebourne Chorus (Mozart’s Requiem): an opportunity for local schools to rehearse and perform choral excerpts with Glyndebourne’s world-renowned Chorus alongside their creative responses on the day of performance, then attend the evening show;
Pit Perfect: instrumentalists from Glyndebourne’s talent development initiative for emerging orchestral players give a short concert at a local college or university, followed by a workshop for students, who then attend the evening Tour performance.

As well as Glyndebourne’s new Resound programme, there are also new initiatives to make Tour performances as welcoming and inclusive to the broadest audience possible. There will be audio-described performances and ‘touch tours’ for those with visual impairments (for The Marriage of Figaro), on-stage introductions and post-show welcomes by cast members, and short, pre-performance musical performances in the foyer providing first-time attendees (as well as aficionados) with a musical guide to that evening’s opera.

In addition, Tour Ambassadors are being recruited from within the local area to help reach out to underrepresented communities and introduce them to opera.

Glyndebourne’s Head of Tour Development Chris Stones said of the new programme of activities: ‘This is step one in a long-term plan to build new audiences for Glyndebourne, for our transformative art form, and for the brilliant venues we tour to. But this is about more than audience development: we want to make a difference to people's lives in a direct way through opera and music-making. The difference we make will vary from person to person but, ultimately, we want to enrich as many people's lives as possible through our work.’

Visit www.glyndebourne.com/tour for more information and book tickets at ATGTICKETS.COM/MiltonKeynes