Watch Glyndebourne’s Béatrice et Bénédict for free
Watch Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s new production of Béatrice et
Bénédict by Berlioz for free on the
Telegraph website. The opera will be streamed live from 6.30pm on Tuesday August 9 at telegraph.co.uk/ glyndebourne, and will be available on demand for the next seven days.
This is the first time that Berlioz’s 1862 work, a sublime take on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, has been staged at Glyndebourne. Béatrice and Bénédict are two characters under the misapprehension that they dislike each other intensely. Their gradual discovery that in fact the opposite is the case provides the hinge of Shakespeare’s (and Berlioz’s) plot.
Berlioz was a fanatical admirer of Shakespeare, and this piece is his tribute to the headlong merriment of youth. Expect wit to merge with fleet-footed Rondos and Trios as the screwball relationship between Shakespeare’s sparkiest lovers unfurls.
The production is directed by Laurent Pelly and conducted by Antonello Manacorda, who is the principal conductor of the Kammerakademie Potsdam and the Het Gelders Orkest in the Netherlands.
Béatrice is played by Stéphanie d’Oustrac (who sang Carmen at Glyndebourne last year) and Bénédict by Paul Appleby (who made his Glyndebourne debut last year in Barrie Kosky’s superb production of Saul).
The broadcast will be available until 11.59pm on Tuesday August 16. This is the last of our free Glyndebourne streams for 2016.
The Glyndebourne Festival continues until August 28. Details and tickets: 01273 815000; glyndebourne.com