When Dad announced to my brothers and me that he was going to demolish the theatre and replace it, we reacted similarly to many of the audience and grumbled that we didn’t like change. He’d stuck his chin out declaring ‘if we don’t knock it down, it’ll fall down’. Childhood memories flooded back; falling in love with Richard van Allan, leaping down a trap door as the Bear in Calisto, falling in love again with Peter Runge who sang Papageno, horrified when Peter Hall had shouted to have me removed from a piece of scenery which I’d sat on and had sailed onto the stage (during a rehearsal), necking open bottles from the audience’s picnics, watching Calvin Simmons conduct Figaro from the pit with Mum, streaking across the front lawn and my brothers hiding under big dresses, spending nearly every night in the summer holidays back stage squeezed into the prompt corner, sending notes with teddies to the music staff who stayed in the house. It had been my playground......
As the bulldozers set to work, fascination replaced my emotional memories. No friend left without an invitation from Dad to ‘come and have a look at my gaping hole’. I was living in London at the time so the emergence of the building every two weeks or so was palpable. And Dad delighted in being a tour guide in a hard hat – curiously enough my mother behaved well about the hard hats squashing her hair. Big groups of goofy people with their heads awry walking over skinny planks did have alarming moments, especially when Sidney, our clumsy bull terrier came too (he didn’t need a hard hat).
Dad was meticulous in his knowledge of the rebuild and could talk at length about load bearing bricks. Eric Gabriel, the Project Manager and Alan Lansdell, the Construction Director of Bovis Construction became friends over the two and a half years he worked with them. They still come to the opera every year and run an eye over the building - a building which sat in model form in our dining room during the final festival of ’92 and which Dad used daily to woo sponsors and donors. These wooing sessions took their toll especially in a recession.
In September 1993 I started working at Glyndebourne as the auditions secretary and casting assistant. Our offices were in the huts, a single-storey building which runs along the bottom of the car park, originally built in the 1930s to house the catering staff. At that time it comprised two dormitories, one for the ladies and one for gentlemen. After an outside catering company was employed, these dormitories were converted into separate rooms for those working in wardrobe, wigs and backstage etc. Boys were still encouraged to sleep at one end with the girls at the other........ In January 1994 we moved into our new offices in the new building. My office looked out over the back door to the house which was handy especially when I needed clerical assistance; Mum was a keen envelope stuffer although matching up the names on the letters to those on the envelope sometimes defied her (after sending out dress rehearsal tickets one year, agents rang baffled why they’d got tickets for a production in which they had no artists). As in every new building there were teething problems. The general director’s assistant complained bitterly that she’d been sunburnt on the back of her neck, through her west facing office window – in January. Enthusiasm far outweighed negativity and when the singers began to turn up for the ’94 festival, we were spinning. The acoustic test proved that the place worked. And as rehearsals progressed so excitement grew.
At 5.00 on 28 May 1994, The Marriage of Figaro opened the new theatre. Sixty years earlier at 5.15 on 28 May 1934 Glyndebourne had been born with the same opera. My grandmother, Audrey Mildmay had sung the role of Susanna with my father making his Glyndebourne debut in her tummy. My job on the night was to look after Roy Henderson who’d sung the Count in 1934. He brought his son with him who must have been about seventy. I’d been instructed by my husband, Simon, who was working for NVC Arts and producing the show live for Channel 4 to deliver Roy Henderson to the front lawn, where the live interval interviews were taking place, towards the end of the long interval. We watched the first half together and parted when we came out of the auditorium for our different toilets. I was wearing contact lenses for the first time which is akin to being on a boat, in that everything seems to rush up to greet you - except Roy Henderson - and I panicked that we’d lost each other already. He was a charming man with a twinkle in his eye. He’d fallen out of his bath a week earlier and was slightly lame and so walked quite slowly. We ate our dinner and obediently waited for instructions from the NVC runner, John Kelleher, the then managing director, to give us the nod that the cameras were ready. John appeared clutching a walkie-talkie and wanting us there in two minutes so I explained to him the cameras would have to wait as the walk from the Mildmay, which is in the car park, to the front lawn, up and down various steps, would take at least ten minutes. John walked with us soothing the irate producer and we, his son and I, at last got him into position. Huge cameras blocked the view out across the ha-ha to the sheep so Roy asked if someone could move them. We watched from a trestle table groaning with booze underneath the mulberry tree, and had another drink. Roy’s response to the opening question was ‘When I first worked at Glyndebourne sixty years ago I thought John Crazy was Christie.’
Louise Flind, (née Christie) March 2009