Young singers vie for a place in the chorus. Never mind that the time commitment is extravagant and the pay meager. To perform on this stage is to be recognized as an artist, not just another pair of vocal cords. Opera fans, too, struggle to get to Glyndebourne, but tickets have always been virtually unobtainable. For these wealthy people, an evening at Glyndebourne is a social rite, a rare chance to behave like a true English eccentric.
Men dress conventionally in black tie.
But Glyndebourne is changing. The design is spare, even modest, making no attempt to impose itself on the landscape, and the acoustics are much better than those of the old house. At the opening, the company tried to keep gloating to a minimum. That must have been hard. The management had, after all, opened the only new opera house in England since the first Glyndebourne theater was built 60 years ago.