Glyndebourne priority booking for subscribers
Glyndebourne is again offering Telegraph subscribers priority booking for the summer Festival all this week (before public booking opens this Sunday). The line-up this year includes two major new productions: director Richard Jones’s take on Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust and the first new Glyndebourne production of The Magic Flute in 15 years. Rossini and Handel classics, along with operatic takes on classic fairy tales, make up the rest of the roster. Rupert Christiansen surveys the season’s productions below. La Damnation De Faust
Richard Jones directs what will doubtless be an arrestingly original new production of Berlioz’s weird and wonderful adaptation of Goethe’s play, with Allan Clayton in the title role and Christopher Purves as Mephistopheles. May 18-July 10 most energetic comic romps returns in Annabel Arden’s staging with a largely new cast including the buffo bass Alessandro Corbelli as Doctor Bartolo. May 19-July 14 Cendrillon
Massenet’s sophisticated and sweettoothed version of the Cinderella fairy tale has been reinterpreted in this production directed by Fiona Shaw. Favourite soprano Danielle de Niese leads the cast.
June 8-Aug 2 Die Zauberflote
André Barbe and Renaud Doucet have looked to fin de siècle Vienna for their new production of one of the most beloved of operas. With Sofia Fomina as Pamina and Björn Bürger as Papageno, this promises to be a treat for all the family.
July 18-Aug 24 rusalka
Glyndebourne’s music director, Robin Ticciati, conducts this revival of Dvořák’s darkly romantic fable of love and loss, staged in Melly Still’s much-admired production.
June 29-Aug 21 rinaldo
The world of Harry Potter is transformed into baroque opera in Robert Carsen’s inventive staging of Handel’s witty fantasy of wizards and witches. Elizabeth Deshong sings the title role and the conductor is Maxim Emelyanychev.
Aug 8-25