As well as the main restaurant there are two private dining rooms: the Map Room, with a view over the Oval Lawn, and the Gallery. Excitingly, you can book to eat inside the house. The vast Doric portico is a copy of the Theseion in Athens and the side elevations imitate the Choragic Monument of Thrasyllus – and it ought to look familiar to those who watched Martha Fiennes’s Onegin, for she used it for a location. Once upon a time the house was leased to George IV, before he was King, as a hunting lodge – and then it was reworked into what is said to be the earliest Greek Revival style house in Europe. (Basically, there are two excellent Country House Opera locations with ‘Grange’ in the title.) Opera at The Grange, an extraordinary Grade I-listed 19 th century neo-classical house in Hampshire, began in 1998, established by Michael Moody and Wasfi Kani – who in 2016 moved Grange Park Opera to a new site in Surrey (see below) following a lease dispute, while here at The Grange, The Grange Festival was set up by Michael Moody (again), the celebrated singer Michael Chance, and others.
There are three restaurants for those who eschew picnicking, all excellent, and all serving locally-sourced, sustainable produce Middle and Over Wallop is run by the Galvin Brothers of Michelin-starred restaurant Galvin La Chapelle.
It’s a beautiful ceiling, the panelled walls are hung with handsome oils, and in the middle of the room is what looks like a leopard-print sofa (actually, it’s Bennison’s Oak Leaf fabric) – the whole is the very epitome of country house style. “Every bedroom is full,” says Gus.) The actual organ, “which has more stops than the one in Westminster Abbey,” is purely ornamental, for when John Christie had it installed in the 1920s ready for an organ-playing friend he’d invited to stay, something went wrong with setting up the pipes, “and when it was played, it blew chunks of plaster out of the ceiling,” recounts Gus. The other room you want to see is the Organ Room, the only public room in the Jacobean-style house that is otherwise home to Gus and his family (and, at this time of year, conductors and directors. Finally, the performance tends to be of the most extraordinary quality (Glyndebourne has become one of the foremost opera companies in the world) and the modern opera houses come equipped not just with superior acoustics, but with superiorly comfortable seats.Īrt is big at Glyndebourne, and this year there’s an exhibition of paintings by Lubaina Himid in the Old Green Room. Increasing the ease, the picnic can be ordered ready-made, and set up for you at a white-clothed table (there are also on-site restaurants as an alternative, some presided over by Michelin-star awarded chefs.) Then, there’s often museum-quality art on show, and occasionally you might even get a glimpse inside the house itself.
KING OF SPADES COSTUME CODE
For integrated into the entertainment is opportunity to picnic among magnificent – and often surprising - private gardens during an appropriately timed interval of civilised length, and the dress code is black tie (which everyone adheres to – though, if you do intend to wander the rose gardens, Deer Park, or England’s most beautiful cricket pitch – yes really - I would suggest flat shoes under your evening dress). The concept proved so popular that it has spread not just through England, but through Europe. She told her husband that if he was going to stage an opera, he may as well build her an opera house – and so he did. Glyndebourne began in 1934, when a man called John Christie decided to throw a small festival at home for his wife, the Canadian soprano Audrey Mildmay.
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