Southampton at Glyndebourne
The Department of Music at the University of Southampton brings its knowledge to the national and international community by contributing to Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s educational programme. Fronting pre-performance talks and all-day workshops, music historians at Southampton bring works from the eighteenth to the twentieth century alive for audiences of all ages.
Summer 2013 has been a busy one for Southampton music historians at Glyndebourne. The season included the first-ever French Baroque opera at the 80-year-old festival, Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie, in a performance conducted by William Christie (the director of Les Arts Florissants) with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and mezzo soprano Sarah Connolly in the role of Phèdre. Southampton’s Professor Jeanice Brooks and Dr Laurie Stras contributed to workshops, pre-performance talks and the Glyndebourne podcast on this important moment in the development of country house opera in the United Kingdom. Listen to the Glyndebourne podcast here.
In operas closely related to Glyndebourne traditions, Dr Francesco Izzo delivered the pre-performance talk on Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Dr Thomas Irvine gave the same service to Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Future plans include Dr Izzo on Verdi’s La traviata, Dr Valeria De Lucca on Handel's Rinaldo, Professor Mark Everist on Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier.