BBC Arts at Glyndebourne Festival

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Richard Strauss’s birth. The complete performance of the opera will be available on BBC Arts Online on 22 June, to coincide with a major documentary on Glyndebourne on BBC Four.

This 90-minute documentary for BBC Four will take us in to the world of the internationally renowned opera house, Glyndebourne. It provides a critical and expert overview of a new production of Richard Strauss’s much loved comic opera Der Rosenkavalier. The programme delves in detail into the historical and musical background of the work, the composer and the context in which the opera was written. It also reflects on its programme history at Glyndebourne and the influences on Richard Jones's new production for 2014.

First and foremost this film is about Strauss and Der Rosenkavalier. Interwoven throughout is the relevance of presenting the work at Glyndebourne in its 80th anniversary year, Glyndebourne today, what makes Glyndebourne and its heritage unique, and the connections between Strauss and Glyndebourne's creative founders from Germany. Through a variety of pacing, and with the use of extracts from the filmed opera, the documentary will provide a thorough exposition of Glyndebourne's new production to provide insight and context to an online broadcast of the entire opera, using an approach that is both expert and appropriate for audiences new to the art form.

BBC Arts Online

BBC Arts Online will unveil the first instalments of a collection of material exploring the Glyndebourne story which will unfold over the summer, produced in collaboration with Glyndebourne.

We launch with a film telling the story of the dress worn by Glyndebourne’s first leading lady: Audrey Mildmay, in the festival’s inaugural production in 1934. Mildmay was not only an accomplished soprano but also the wife of John Christie, founder of the Glyndebourne Festival. It was thought that her costume was lost but it was discovered on a rail of discarded costumes which were ready for recycling.

The film also tells of the close association between the festival and Mozart’s Marriage Of Figaro, the opera which opened the festival 80 years ago and was also the first to be performed at the opening of the new opera house 60 years later.

There will also be an archive feature on how Glyndebourne changed opera - the story of how three refugees from Nazi Germany, Fritz Busch, Carl Ebert and Rudolf Bing, helped to found the Glyndebourne Festival and in the process professionalised opera production in the UK. We are also publishing 20 minutes of rare BBC film archive of Carl Ebert in interview and rehearsing in Glyndebourne in 1954.