Glyndebourne?

‘It’s

somewhere

between

Hogwarts

and

a

boarding

school’

William Kentridge is making his debut at the Sussex festival directing L’Orfeo. He talks about his 103-year-old father’s opera obsession, fighting apartheid and his Jewishness

For the artist William Kentridge there are two kinds of opera directors. The first, he says, “is a hired hand of the opera company. You know… they say, ‘Let’s find a set designer, a costume and a lighting guy.’ And the director is one of the people they employ.”

This is not the director that you get when Kentridge signs on.

The South African artist accepts an operatic gig “as an invitation to make a four-dimensional drawing over two hours… a canvas which is 14 metres wide and 9 metres high. And not only that, we’ll give you 20 of the best musicians in the world to help you make this drawing, and great music, and a libretto. And we’ll throw in a chorus for you to play with…”

We have not yet even considered the bucolic spot where Kentridge’s next all-singing, all-dancing canvas will be plopped. At 70, the world-renowned draughtsman, sculptor and film-maker is making his Glyndebourne debut (with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on hand) with Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, a production that has already taken up two years of modelling, drawing, recording and rehearsing in the Johannesburg studio from where he is talking to me.