Glyndebourne, amid the gently rolling plains of East Sussex, began its history as the toniest of summer opera retreats in 1934, with Mozart on the bill. Musically, Mozart ruled there for quite some time, even as the repertoire expanded into the present (Benjamin Britten’s spanking-new Rape of Lucretia was heard at Glyndebourne in 1946, Igor Stravinsky’s three-year-old The Rake’s Progress in 1954). The original auditorium was a repurposed organ room admired for its acoustics though not for amenity (for that you had the lawn, and your picnic dinner at intermission, served by your butler in white gloves). A sea change came in 1994, with the inauguration of a state-of-the-art new house, as comfortable as it was handsome, which quadrupled capacity from a cramped 300 to an ample 1,200. In 2003, the management took a leap of faith into Wagner—usually housed in larger venues—with Tristan und Isolde. Directed by the late Nikolaus Lehnhoff, who knew how to distill drama to its essence, with cool, uncluttered stage design by Roland Aeschlimann, the production proved a triumph for all concerned, including Nina Stemme and Robert Gambill as the adulterous lovers, René Pape as the king they betray, and the conductor Jiří Bělohlávek. Several revivals later, the Glyndebourne Tristan remains a classic. This year’s cast showcases Miina-Liisa Värelä, Stuart Skelton, and Franz-Josef Selig under the baton of Robin Ticciati, a colorist of iridescent imagination. —Matthew Gurewitsch