Even the most august institutions must adapt to their times, and Glyndebourne is no exception. When the artistic director of Britain’s longest-established summer opera festival, Stephen Langridge, talks about his autumn season, there is a sense of expansion and rejuvenation. In a musical ecosystem facing public subsidy cuts and increased commercial competition, there’s no time to rest on laurels, even on the Glyndebourne lawns. If the summers increasingly feature long-run blockbusters, the autumn – when the place becomes a “local international opera house” – may just be turning into a significant force for change.

The festival itself was founded by the estate’s owner, John Christie, in 1934 (the current executive chair, Gus Christie, is John’s grandson). After 92 years, it may be famed for its exquisite gardens, picnics and punters in evening dress, but its artistic programme is second to none. Some of the world’s finest directors, conductors and singers have graced its stage; megastars such as Nina Stemme, Rolando Villazón and Lise Davidsen have experienced breakthrough moments there.

Langridge’s father, the much-loved tenor Philip Langridge, was a regular, working his way up to take the lead in operas like Britten’s Peter Grimes and Birtwistle’s The Second Mrs Kong. “I literally learned to walk here as my dad was in the chorus when I was a baby,” Langridges says. “I learned to walk as a director here as well, working on community and youth operas. This job felt like coming home.”

Glyndebourne 2025 – the festival has been steered through Covid and major subsidy cuts (Photo: Graham Carlow)

Since assuming the post in 2019, he has steered the theatre through first the Covid-19 pandemic and then in 2022 a swingeing Arts Council England (ACE) cut – Glyndebourne receives subsidy only for its non-festival elements. The prime casualty was the annual tour. “The ACE didn’t say ‘Thou shalt not tour’,” Langridge points out. “They said, ‘Here’s a 52 per cent cut, and the money you’re getting is for children, young people and talent development.’ We just had to work out how we spend the money we’ve got.”

Autumn performances at Glyndebourne used to kick off the tour. Now, rather than “bussing the companies around the country”, the house presents an expanded season at home in Sussex, with a focus on emerging artists, cheaper tickets, no evening dress, and no picnics; in October it is in any case a bit chillier. “It’s more beer and pretzels than champagne and strawberries,” Langridge says. “We want to be the local international opera house, and that seems to be working. It’s selling extremely well.”

So is the summer festival; but this too is moving with the times. Staging warhorses was emphatically not what Glyndebourne – long associated with Mozart – used to be about. Yet now it is presenting its first-ever Tosca: director Ted Huffman’s production of the Puccini masterpiece opened in May and runs throughout the summer. Next year’s programme features La Traviata and Carmen, likewise among the most popular of all operas. What’s going on?

In the gardens in 1957. There is no official no dress code, but the eveningwear tradition has stuck (Photo by Roy Knight/BIPs/Getty)

“It’s such fun being an artistic director in an international opera house that’s never done Tosca,” Langridge says, teasing. “The assumption is that it has to be in a massive theatre with enormous scenery and thousands of extras, but we have a chance to do it differently. The score and the drama are incredibly detailed. It’s great to be able to present it in a way which allows for real musical subtlety in a work that is sometimes thought of as bombastic. In Glyndebourne, you’re close enough to the stage to see people’s eyes moving.”

One fellow critic grumbled to me that Tosca is “not a Glyndebourne piece”. Did the audience agree? “Our regulars bought the whole lot up immediately.” Langridge gives a grin. “We probably could have done another 10 performances.”

Smash hits can and do help to fund riskier projects, but it’s tempting to wonder whether commercial concerns are in the ascendant. “It could be argued that there is a flight to the familiar at the moment,” Langridge acknowledges of his audience. “If you have one day off work and there’s something familiar or something unfamiliar, I get why you might choose Mozart over Janáček. But also, I wish more people would come to Káťa Kabanová, because I think they would love it.”

Alina Wunderlin (Zerbinetta) and Ru Charlesworth (Dancing Master) take part in rehearsals for the opera ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

If Janáček, who died in 1928, is a risk, what about contemporary works? Glyndebourne has commissioned and hosted the world premieres of new operas that have subsequently swept the globe, notably Jonathan Dove’s Flight and Brett Dean’s Hamlet. “There is a tradition of new work here, starting with Britten’s Albert Herring and The Rape of Lucretia in the 1940s up to Flight and works by Birtwistle,” Langridge notes. But there are none this year. Or next.

Langridge points to the autumn season, again, as a platform for new work. Last year it featured The Railway Children by Mark-Anthony Turnage, a new opera based on E Nesbit’s classic children’s novel; and younger composers can be nurtured through commissions for youth and community opera, which have been woven into the season rather than being left to February half-term: “We have a new work this year from Lucy Armstrong and Olivia Bell called Spark. We’re also commissioning a series of chamber operas for the autumn over the coming years, as well as lining up festival commissions.” It’s possible to imagine the autumn season becoming an engine room for Glyndebourne as a whole.

New festival productions are in strong supply, though, and this summer is bringing two more. Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, another first for Glyndebourne, is directed by the visionary South African artist William Kentridge; and next week Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos opens in a staging by the French director Laurent Pelly.

Ariadne auf Naxos is a complex, quirky piece of two halves: first the plot shows us the preparations for staging a performance in almost impossible circumstances, and after the interval we see the result. Langridge, without spoilers, comments: “Laurent knows how to play the heartfelt tragedy, the passionate, serious work and the wit. And he’s absolutely capable of turning on a sixpence. Or a centime.”

The packed auditorium at Glyndebourne (Photo: Sam Stephenson)

Among Langridge’s tasks now is to plan Glyndebourne’s centenary in 2034, which is not as far away as it sounds. “We’re not going to put our feet up and say, ‘Job done.’ We’ve got all sorts of plans. The question is, how can we be more like ourselves?” He hints at “infrastructure” development – again, no spoilers. “The centenary is not just a birthday party on 28 May 2034. It needs to be about what happens in that decade.”

Risky? Certainly – but in the end, opera is risky by its very nature. “The great thing about opera is anything can go wrong at any point,” Langridge remarks. “The safest-looking production could be an absolute turkey. If there’s no risk, then probably you haven’t tried hard enough. I think the board would be looking over their glasses at me if I was doing something they thought was completely safe, because that wouldn’t be very Glyndebourne.” It is in the place’s DNA to be pioneering, he insists: “What did George Christie do? He knocked his dad’s opera house down and built another one.” The present theatre opened in 1994.

What remains very Glyndebourne is the sight of togged-up summer opera-goers decamping from Lewes station onto the shuttle bus. There’s no dress code, but the tradition has stuck. “I think people enjoy dressing up,” Langridge remarks. “The ones really going for it are the under-30s. But at the moment we’re trying to encourage people to take their jackets off, because it’s just so flipping hot.”

‘Ariadne auf Naxos’, directed by Laurent Pelly, is at Glyndebourne from 19 July to 26 August. Booking: 01273 815 000, or glyndebourne.com