The Merry Widow at Glyndebourne Festival 2024

My second visit to Glyndebourne Festival 2024 was to see The Merry Widow. I had never seen the opera before and that was enough for me to want to see it this time and I booked seats Red Upper Circle    C : 42/44 for £150 each. This was somewhat more that my first visit and that was because weekends are usually more expensive at Glyndebourne. The view was good and the seats were still good value. I always book this part of the house for a reason.

If I had done any research I would have known that the opera was in English and I might also have known that a lot of it was spoken rather than sung. These changes from the usual Glyndebourne fare made it a different experience but one I got used to.

This production had the style of a west end musical with lots of crowd pleasing antics and jokes, everyone laughed when the large tray of Ferrero Rocher appeared.

There was quite a bit of slap-stick too, the highpoint being an extravagant sex scene in a summer house where the bodies were literally flying (and other things!).

The staging was grand and the costumes grander, all of which added to sumptuousness of the performance.

The plot did little but was more than enough to hang the humour and the music on. The nature of The Merry Widow is that the humour was more prominent than the music but there were plenty of good tunes along the way and, as always, the singing was excellent, particularly from the Merry Widow herself.

This was an unusual Glyndebourne experience for me , and not one that I will probably rush to repeat, but it was a lot of fun, the quality of the production was very high and I am glad that I went.