Upbeat: Not a picnic

GLYNDEBOURNE may be knocking down its theatre, but the company is not taking the year off. Instead it will decamp to the Royal Festival Hall to join the London Philharmonic - resident orchestra for both institutions - in a series of concert performances next June and July. Andrew Davis conducts Beatrice et Benedict, Klaus Tennstedt Fidelio, and Franz Welser-Most The Merry Widow. The casts, says Glyndebourne's chairman Sir George Christie, will include 'a number of singers whom Glyndebourne has passionately chased, but not succeeded in engaging in the past.'

The new theatre is due to open on 28 May 1994 with a revived Marriage of Figaro, and the season will continue with new productions of Eugene Onegin and Don Giovanni and revivals of Peter Grimes and The Rake's Progress. Glyndebourne Touring Opera's autumn 1994 season will launch a commission from Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Russell Hoban.