George Christie

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Sir George William Langham Christie ( December 31, 1934 in Glyndebourne near Lewes , East Sussex - May 7, 2014 ibid) was an English opera director who directed the Glyndebourne Festival for nearly four decades .

life and work

Christie was the son of the Glyndebourne Festival founding couple , patron John Christie and soprano Audrey Mildmay . Together with two German emigrants, the conductor Fritz Busch and the director Carl Ebert , they founded a festival mainly dedicated to Mozart in 1934 at Christie's country estate in the south of England , which quickly gained international recognition - although the small opera house only had 300 seats at the time .

Christie spent the years 1940 to 1944 with his mother and sister Rosamond (1933–1988) in Canada because his father feared a German invasion of England and wanted the family to be brought to safety. In 1947 he was in a Glyndebourne production of Verdi's Macbeth at the Edinburgh International Festival on stage for the first time, as Fleance, son of Banquo, a silent role. He then attended Eton College , later Trinity College , Cambridge, but left the university without a degree. Christie worked for a few years in the Gulbenkian Foundation , but from 1958 gradually took on more and more tasks in Glyndebourne. After the death of his father in 1962, he was given overall responsibility for the country estate and the festival.

With great skill he was able on the one hand to maintain the high artistic quality of the festival, on the other hand to manage the balancing act between the expansion necessary for survival and the maintenance of the intimate and familiar atmosphere. The festival, which was financed by his father from the family fortune in the first few years, needed a broad base of sponsors in order to survive. Christie managed to win over both companies and individuals for long-term support of the festival. Step by step, the auditorium was expanded and the stage technology improved. One of his main concerns was to give broader sections of the population access to the elite art form of opera. In 1968 he founded the project Glyndebourne On Tour , which made the festival productions accessible to a wider audience in England, but also in Ireland, France and the Netherlands in the autumn. In 1986 he established his own education department , on the one hand to arouse understanding for the art form opera in the area and in schools, on the other hand to be able to integrate new operas into the program. This project has received several awards and today there are hardly any opera houses that can do without this mediation channel.

The highlight of Christie's activities at the end of the 1980s was the decision to demolish the old opera house and build a completely new theater with fifty percent more seats. To this end, he engaged the architect couple Michael and Patricia Hopkins, who turned the stage and auditorium by 180 degrees, thus enabling direct access for the audience to the garden and picnic. The new house with 1,200 seats was opened in 1994 - like the old one in 1934 - with Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and was received with high approval by both the public and the press.

From 1968 to 1988 he was also founding chairman of the London Sinfonietta Orchestra . From 1988 to 1992 he chaired the Music Advisory Board of the Arts Council of Great Britain . Christie has received numerous domestic and international awards. In 1984, after a visit to Glyndebourne, Queen Elizabeth II proposed him to a Knight Bachelor .

In 1958 he married Mary Nicholson . The couple had three sons and a daughter, Hector, Ptolemy, Gus and Louise. George Christie retired from the Glyndebourne Festival on December 31, 1999 and his son Gus Christie took over on the first day of the new century.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gramophone: My opera debut: Sir George Christie , accessed July 24, 2016.
  2. ^ The Telegraph (London): Sir George Christie - obituary , May 7, 2014, accessed July 24, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Christie, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Christie, Sir George William Langham (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English opera director
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Glyndebourne at Lewes
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 2014
Place of death Glyndebourne at Lewes