The unsung heroes of Glyndebourne
Being a chorus member at Glyndebourne is a unique experience – and often the first step to stardom,
While many opera choruses are notorious for their truculent attitude and jaundiced resort to the union reps, the chorus at Glyndebourne is different. Here, a level of artistry can be honed that is simply not possible elsewhere – and, as Janet Baker proves, it is often the first step to stardom.
The chorus is the soul of everything that Glyndebourne is and stands for: every year, one can only marvel at the fresh beauty of the sound it produces as well as its resourceful and imaginative acting.
Most opera choruses merely go through the motions – they file on and off, they stand and deliver without commitment to anything beyond the notes they sing. Backstage they are notorious for their truculent attitude and jaundiced resort to the union reps: they’ve been in the business for years, and they don’t take kindly to change.
Fortunately, Britain’s four permanent opera choruses aren’t like that – at Welsh National Opera, the Royal Opera, English National Opera and Opera North, they will go the extra mile for the art – but Glyndebourne’s chorus is special.
Every year it changes its personnel, combining a core of returning regulars with a high number (sometimes as much as 50 per cent) of young singers just out of college or completing their postgraduate studies. Given a relatively small number of productions and long rehearsal periods in idyllic conditions on the Glyndebourne site, a level of refined artistry can be honed that is simply not possible elsewhere.
It also helps that its annual cycle is far from relentless. Preparations begin after Easter for performances starting in mid-May; these then continue on an average four nights a week until the festival’s conclusion in late August. After a break in September, the chorus reassembles in slightly truncated form for a tour of England until early December.
Everyone is then released for a period of freelance work over the winter.
All this means that the Glyndebourne chorus is not somewhere you get bogged down. Those who choose to stay are nurtured and developed, and those who sign up for just one season reckon that you can learn more here in a few months than in an academic year in the conservatoire. So it’s not surprising that the list of those who have passed through on their way to stardom – Janet Baker, John Tomlinson, Gerald Finley, Sarah Connolly – is legendary, “and tomorrow’s Bakers and Finleys are still piling in”, says Jeremy Bines, Chorus Master since 2009.
Bines is a warmly cheerful fellow, who clearly loves what he does and commands the loyalty of his troops. As second-year chorister Emma Kerr puts it, “You know that he’s incredibly proud of what we do, and that is so inspiring.” Michael Wallace agrees, and he should know: he’s been in the chorus since 1999. “Jeremy’s enthusiasm is incredible,” he says.
Bines’s responsibilities include the annual recruitment of 30 choristers, selected from around 500 applicants, as well as rehearsing in collaboration with the conductor – a relationship that can become “a bit political”, he admits. But if he has a grouse, it’s the shortage of singers with the French, German and Italian language skills required by the standard opera repertory – a failure for which the conservatoires are largely to blame.
This year’s major undertaking is Handel’s oratorio with 20 numbers, the chorus in this grand work sings as much if not more than all the soloists combined. Before rehearsals, Bines had a close briefing from the conductor Ivor Bolton, himself a former Glyndebourne Chorus Master. Bines then led the chorus through 15 preliminary sessions, during which all the notes were mastered. After Bolton’s arrival in June, he and Bines began finetuning in partnership.
“Ivor doesn’t want any vibrato in the sound,” Bines says. “It wouldn’t be good baroque style. But vibrato is just what is required for those horny workmen and slutty cigarette girls in Carmen! Working across those differences is the challenge. Sometimes you aim for homogeneity, sometimes for a sense of 50 soloists, all asserting their own personalities.”
The wealth of such people in the chorus, singers capable of holding the stage alone, means that when a star falls sick, the understudying chorus member gets to replace him or her. This rarely happens in other opera houses, where another big name will be parachuted in, but at Glyndebourne senior choristers are kept on their toes by the thought that tonight could be their night.
For Michael Wallace, the call to take the title role in Don Giovanni has come twice. Once at a “relatively civilised 12 hours’ notice”, but once at 4pm, when his wife, also in the chorus, rushed through the front door, broke the news and handed him the car keys. “It was a breakneck 30-minute drive from our house in Eastbourne, but by 5.30 I was in costume and on stage,” he says.
This year young tenor Aidan Coburn is waiting to see if his number comes up for Pedrillo in Die Entführung aus
dem Serail. “The plus side,” he says,” is the wonderful coaching I’m being given, whether I go on or not.”
It’s not all work. The money may not be brilliant, but the perks are. There’s a lively staff pub on the premises, the George & Mary, which is the scene of much post-performance merriment. Numerous inter-chorus marriages have blossomed – Michael Wallace got together with his wife Rachel “over the rape scene in Theodora”. An annual riot is the “catering dress rehearsal”, during which Glyndebourne’s restaurants practise their interval dinner service on the chorus, the feast free of charge, just bring your own bottles.
Yes, a few fainthearted souls find the atmosphere a little stifling – a cross between a holiday and a prison camp, hence the nickname “Glynditz” – but the majority believe that the minority who prefer to commute to London rather than taking digs in nearby Lewes lose out on the fun and camaraderie. “I love the feeling that once I’m here, I’m totally absorbed and focused,” says Marta Fontanals-Sammons. “It’s such a privilege to work here that it’s impossible to think of it as a 9 to 5 job.”