This Fall, Opus Arte and DigiScreen offer cinema opera fans their first exciting chance to see the highlight productions from the world renowned Glyndebourne Festival Opera. On Saturday, November 14th, Glyndebourne’s acclaimed production of FALSTAFF lights up the screen when Verdi’s delightful portrait of one of Shakespeare’s best loved characters presents at select Landmark Cinemas locations and other select theatres in Canada. Distributed worldwide by DigiScreen, the highly acclaimed production appears on select Canadian screens as part of an ongoing cinema series from the world’s great stages presented by The Royal Opera House’s Opus Arte.
Verdi’s astounding score takes on new life in Richard’s Jones’s darkly funny production of the much-loved masterpiece Falstaff. Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff is a mercurial, nimble-footed and profusely tuneful portrait of Shakespeare’s Fat Knight. The libretto combines three parts Merry Wives of Windsor to two parts Henry IV, with a sprinkling of fairy dust from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A witty farce, the opera follows Falstaff’s attempted seduction of two local ladies who then exact their wily revenge on him. In Jones’s hands, Shakespeare’s Windsor becomes a delightful half-timbered England complete with busty barmaids, Brownies and Eton schoolboys boating on the Thames.
A strongly international cast is led by the exciting British baritone Christopher Purves in the larger-than-life role of the corpulent Falstaff, whose profligate presence both outrages and inspires the leaner, meaner citizens of Windsor. His Falstaff is an unforgettable, brilliantly original creation and the triumphant production is vintage Glyndebourne.
“Verdi’s score explodes with comic invention! Exceptional singing!” - Daily Express
“Quite simply wonderful!” - Musicalcriticism
FALSTAFF was captured before a live audience at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in June 2009. Since the 1930’s, the popular annual opera festival has flourished, residing in the grand English country house Glyndebourne near Lewes, in East Sussex.
Tickets will be available at $19.95 + tax per adult, $16.95 + tax per senior and $9.95 + tax per child. For cinema locations and to purchase advance tickets throughout Canada visit www.digiscreen.ca. For Landmark Cinemas in Alberta and BC, go to www.landmarkcinemas.com. For independent theatres in Vancouver and Waterloo please visit www.festivalcinemas.ca, www.princesscinemas.com.
About Glyndebourne Festival Opera
The curtain rose on the first performance of the Opera Festival at Glyndebourne on 28th May, 1934. It was the culmination of one man’s obsession with the idea of presenting ‘not the best we can do, but the best that can be done anywhere’. The words are John Christie’s, owner of the estate at Glyndebourne, which he had inherited in 1920. He ‘felt that it [opera] was almost non existent…in England, so we ought to begin to bring it here’. He designed the theatre to hold 300 people, a reasonable orchestra pit and a stage furnished with the most modern technical and lighting equipment. He eventually found the men that he wanted for his opera house - conductor Fritz Busch from Dresden and producer Carl Ebert from Berlin who had left Germany because they could not work under the Hitler regime. The first season lasted for two weeks, with six performances of Le nozze di Figaro and six of Così fan tutte. The first performance of Figaro was unlike anything that the audience had experienced before, and whatever their reason for coming, an audience which had certainly arrived in a mood of scepticism returned knowing that it had enjoyed a unique experience. It was not only that they had enjoyed a good dinner during the long interval and a walk in a garden surrounded by beautiful downland scenery, but they had witnessed the creation of an entirely new standard of operatic performance. It was a standard achieved by endless rehearsal and by attention to detail - in the orchestra, the singing, the acting, the scenery and costumes. There were no star names among the singers; the secret of the success of the first Glyndebourne performances was the quality of the ensemble, which was built on the principle of choosing the best singers for the parts, no matter where they came from. These remain the trademarks of Glyndebourne to this day. Glyndebourne Festival Opera is a cherished international institution.
