There I was at the National Theatre trying to persuade Olivier to open it and trying to get it going and at that moment, having left Covent Garden, Glyndebourne swum into sight. And I went to Glyndebourne in 1970 to do La Calisto, a… a baroque opera by Cavalli, and immediately found a… found a sort of home. It's interesting actually because way, way back when I just left Cambridge I wrote to Glyndebourne asking if I could be considered as an assistant to Carl Ebert who was a great German director, who was in charge of Glyndebourne at that time, and he interviewed me in a taxi going from the Ritz to Victoria when he was going down to Glyndebourne, and it wasn't a very satisfactory interview. He seemed a little abstracted and I was a bit nervous, the taxi… Anyway, I thought, well, that won't ever happen and they said, ‘We'll let you know in a fortnight’ and nothing happened. And during the next week I was offered the Arts Theatre so I said yes, I mean, who wouldn't; very little money but your own theatre. So when Glyndebourne actually came through and said I'd got the job, I had to say I've taken another one, sorry, so there was a little froideur with Glyndebourne for some years because they're rightly very persuaded about who is a Glyndebourne person and who isn't. But I've survived happily at Glyndebourne, I would have done 19 productions there which rather amazes me, and if you work at Glyndebourne, it does mean you really don't want to work anywhere else in the opera world, I have to say. That's the only trouble. Their pay is not the best but you do go on the first day as the director and there's the set, either on the stage or in the rehearsal room, full, finished. And, I mean, to work like that is something that only happens sometimes if you're lucky at Bayreuth but it certainly doesn't happen anywhere else, you know. So it's… it's a good gig. And it's the only opera house in the world where I've been – and I've worked now in many – where the drama is actually as important as the music. So, you know, in… in many houses still, the conductor is the absolute boss and the… the director is somebody who shows the singers onto the stage like the butler, make sure they don't bump into each other and that's about it.
