An agreeable night at the opera

ANYONE needing evidence that people get more conservative with age need look no further than the West End transfer of David Hare’s new play.

Once a Left-wing firebrand, Sir David has now penned an agreeable yarn about the 1934 founding of Glyndebourne.

The subject matter couldn’t be safer, focusing as it does on Roger Allam’s marvellously patrician opera lover John Christie, heir to the stately home that became English opera’s country seat on the Sussex Downs.

We’re told his inspiration was his soprano wife Audrey Mildmay; but Hare delights in the irony that it was three Germanic musicians, fleeing the Nazis, who were responsible for its stewardship.

Allam — in a bald wig and stuffed linen suit, and with his trademark plummy baritone — makes an endearing Christie, devoted to his ailing wife.

Nancy Carroll is an engaging Audrey, alternatively fiery and demure. Amid the wrangling over whether the English hate opera (or just opera audiences), whether they should open with Wagner or Mozart, and whether Audrey should audition for a role, the Teutons (Anthony Calf, Paul Jesson and Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) are arguably more sparky.

The pleasures of Jeremy Herrin’s cosy production lie more in the sheep-grazing vistas of Bob Crowley’s nostalgic design. Otherwise, the show is as staid as a National Trust tea room — and could benefit from a bit more of a bun fight.