Glyndebourne in Cinemas: Vanessa

A rare opportunity to see Barber’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work – opera from the age of Hitchcock, with an atmospheric score and tense, psychological twists.

Abandoned by her lover Anatol, Vanessa retreats from the world, waiting and hoping with only her mother and her niece Erika for company. But when, 20 years later, Anatol’s handsome young son arrives unexpectedly, he shatters the calm of this shuttered household of women. Past and present love collides, and the aftershocks threaten to destroy them all.

An operatic thriller from the age of Hitchcock, Samuel Barber’s Pulitzer Prize-winning first opera boasts one of the 20th century’s most beautiful scores. Poised constantly on the edge of song, Vanessa unfolds in generous swathes of melody, rich in filmic strings and soaring brass, with echoes of Puccini, Berg and Strauss. It climaxes in a final quintet of Mozartean poignancy – one of the great ensembles of the contemporary repertoire.

Seldom performed in the UK, this is a rare opportunity to see Barber’s heart-breaking domestic drama. Olivier Award-winning director Keith Warner makes his much-anticipated Glyndebourne debut with this production, which promises to bring out the psychological tensions that sit just below the surface of this charged work.

Broadcast live from Glyndebourne. Please note that due to the 90-minute interval at Glyndebourne and the need to shorten the interval for cinema and online audiences a delay of approximately an hour is built into broadcasting the first half, which is made up in the second half.

Ticket price includes a £1 contribution to our heritage fund.