, as well as the choice of key interpreters for the operas we present – conductors, directors, designers – and how we cast the performers.' Stephen Langridge, the artistic director of Glyndebourne, has previously stated that the opera house in East Sussex was working towards being 'fully inclusive and diverse'. In 2021, it partnered with the south London-based Pegasus Opera Company, which offers aspiring artists of African and Asian heritage a programme of coaching and mentoring. 'Championing' hidden music Ibbett-Brown said that she was happy to promote Bologne as part of Glyndebourne's programme: 'Why would I not champion this great music that currently, actually, so few of us actually get to enjoy? 'Everyone feels this sort of prejudice, whether it's persons, or more commonly inherited from a shared history and education and so on. It gives us blinkers.' She added: 'We may miss these perfect pockets of inspiration; of genius. When we take those blinkers off, all we can do is see more beauty in the world,){kind=link}
Opera house to feature works of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart under plans to make arts diverse
Glyndebourne is set to include music by a composer labelled the “Black Mozart” as part of efforts to make opera “truly equitable”.
The East Sussex opera house will stage works by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the 18th-century virtuoso who was of mixed-race origin and whose career has been largely forgotten.
His arias will be performed at Glyndebourne for the first time and included in a concert of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem as part of an initiative to improve diversity in opera.
The first classical composer of African ancestry, Bologne was highly successful before his works were stamped out by Napoleon Bonaparte, which reduced the one-time celebrity to a relative unknown compared to Mozart.