La Clemenza di Tito was commissioned to celebrate the coronation of the Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in 1791, and was written in eighteen days. Nicholas Hytner’s elegant new staging, performed in the original Italian language, was premiered during the Mozart Bicentenary season at Glyndebourne on 28th June, 1991. An impressive cast is led by Philip Langridge (Tito), Ashley Putnam (Vitellia) and Diana Montague (Sesto). New recitatives, to replace those written by Mozart’s pupil Süssmayr, were commissioned from composer Stephen Oliver for this production. Andrew Davis conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades)
From the Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1992: Producer Graham Vick, designer Richard Hudson, conductor Sir Andrew Davis, the London Philharmonic and the full cast of singers won unanimous critical acclaim for their revelatory interpretation of this mesmeric and psychologically harrowing work. Hudson’s eighteenth-century costumes are sumptuously realistic, while his set is abstract and modern. The cast features three top Russian singers – Sergei Leiferkus, Dimitri Kharitonov and Yuri Marusin. Nancy Gustafson, Felicity Palmer and Louise Winter also won high praise for their performances in this “marvellous and brilliant piece of modern music-theatre” (Financial Times). (Sung in Russian)