Audrey Mildmay

Audrey Mildmay, later to become Audrey Christie, was the charming and vivacious soprano who performed in an early musical project at Glyndebourne and captured first the attention and, soon after, the heart of John Christie.

Audrey Christie’s time at Glyndebourne was cut sadly short by her early death in May 1953, but her legacy lives on in the energy and spirit of the festival today – a festival she set in motion with one simple phrase: ‘If you’re going to spend all that money John, for God’s sake do the thing properly….’

This lovely portrait of Audrey Christie was taken after her marriage by the fashionable London society photographer ‘Vivienne’ (Florence Vivienne Mellish). The soft prettiness and shy sidelong look may suggest a fragile character, but Christie was both ambitious and tremendously hard-working, as her time at Glyndebourne bears out.

Christie’s ambition almost gave Glyndebourne a very different story. Having accepted John Christie proposal of marriage, the soprano – who was very reluctant to give up a singing career just beginning to flourish – then changed her mind when she was invited to an audition in London. A letter from John Christie to his mother still exists in the archive today telling her that ‘The wedding is in doubt’.

But John prevailed and the two were married in June 1931. Another singer might have assumed leading roles at the nascent Glyndebourne Festival as her right, but Audrey not only auditioned for artistic directors Carl Ebert and Fritz Busch but did so, according to Busch, with real nerve, keen to impress on her own merits.

She needn’t have worried. Busch and Ebert, who had demanded final say on all casting decisions, were charmed by her, and cast her to sing her first Susanna at the very first Glyndebourne Festival in 1934 – an achievement all the more impressive because Mildmay had given birth to her first child just months before auditioning, and would deliver her second before 1934 was over.

‘Rehearsal on stage; first time for Figaro….’

Audrey Christie kept some form of diary throughout most of her life. Many tiny leather-bound books are still held in the Glyndebourne Archive, filled with often cryptic notes of appointments and activities, but Christie also wrote fuller accounts of her life, and although the diary dating from the first Festival year of 1934 is missing we do still have a vivid account of 1935.

Figaro returned to the stage for its first revival in 1935, and if Christie’s diary entries are anything to go by, there was no slackening of pace or endeavour compared the previous year’s premiere. Christie records running every scene between Susanna and Figaro in a single day, working right through to 8.30pm. Having presumably missed dinner, she retires to bed ‘with an orange’ at midnight.

The sense of Christie’s multiple roles – singer, hostess, wife, mother – is conveyed here in a telling detail. Having rehearsed all day, Christie’s work is still not done. Concerned by a ‘badly sold’ house for the next day she spends time in the evening ‘making lists’ in hope of remedying the situation.