This is one of the poorest musical programmes that I have ever seen.
Purporting to tell the 'untold' history of Glyndebourne it quickly rushed through the well known story of John Christie, his passion for opera, his marriage to Audrey Mildmay and their decision to stage operas at his Sussex home. The majority of the programme then concerned itself with telling the story of, and the preparation for, the new production of 'Der Rosenkavalier'. Perhaps if you were a Strauss fan you would delight in about 65 minutes of a 90 minute programme being devoted to one composer and to one of his works. If, however, you are a more broad minded admirer of opera you would miss examples of, and references to, the other great works that Glyndebourne has staged during its justly famous production history. It seemed to be a programme pitched to a network head with one story to tell and then, for some reason, the story was changed. The result was this awful miss-mash of clips and talking heads arranged in some vague order and then given a title to hook the keen but innocent viewer. I think that the BBC should apologise for having given it air time.
Purporting to tell the 'untold' history of Glyndebourne it quickly rushed through the well known story of John Christie, his passion for opera, his marriage to Audrey Mildmay and their decision to stage operas at his Sussex home. The majority of the programme then concerned itself with telling the story of, and the preparation for, the new production of 'Der Rosenkavalier'. Perhaps if you were a Strauss fan you would delight in about 65 minutes of a 90 minute programme being devoted to one composer and to one of his works. If, however, you are a more broad minded admirer of opera you would miss examples of, and references to, the other great works that Glyndebourne has staged during its justly famous production history. It seemed to be a programme pitched to a network head with one story to tell and then, for some reason, the story was changed. The result was this awful miss-mash of clips and talking heads arranged in some vague order and then given a title to hook the keen but innocent viewer. I think that the BBC should apologise for having given it air time.