Opera, my new love and me

Hector is now a full-time eco-warrior, and runs a green commune in north Devon. It was he who heckled Tony Blair at the 2004 Labour Conference in Brighton, in protest at the hunting ban, and was forcibly ejected from the hall by security guards.

"He's a sort of global activist," explains Gus. "He campaigns against supermarkets and GM foods and nuclear energy, and he's chairing a wind farm down in Devon. I very much believe in a lot of what he's doing."

The other siblings are both involved in the arts: Gus's younger brother Ptolemy has directed opera at Grange Park in Winchester and is currently working as a director for Pimlico Opera. In the past he has introduced opera into prisons, directing all-male casts to great acclaim.

The more prosaically named Louise sits on the board at Glyndebourne, and both siblings live down the road from the main house. Theirs is a fiercely close family.

But Gus was groomed for the top job: "I joined the board when I was 25, and I knew my dad was sort of keen that I take over, but he didn't force me into it. The idea scared the hell out of me at first. It's a big national institution and I'm glad I pursued my own career first. I think an inheritance of this kind can be difficult."

It has been a steep learning curve, he confesses, not least because of Glyndebourne's notoriously perilous financial structure. Uniquely among British arts companies, the festival must sell 94 per cent of the tickets each season - top price £165 - to keep itself afloat. Last year it hit 97 per cent, and Christie expects to meet a similar target this year. Sponsorship and donations fill a budgetary hole of £2 million, yet the corporate hospitality department essentially comprises one man: Gus Christie himself.

Most nights of the season he "entertains, and nurtures" supporters in the family's 500-year-old manor house next door to the opera house, just as his parents did for more than 35 years. "It's a crucial part of my job," he says.

It's been much harder, he admits, since 2004, when his former wife Imogen Lycett Green, a granddaughter of the poet John Betjeman, suddenly left him, and took their four young sons with her. The break-up hit the gossip columns with a vengeance, largely because they had seemed so perfect a couple, but also because Glyndebourne's survival appeared to rely on a strong Christie family at its heart.

"What I went through was life-changing," he says of the break-up. "But things settle down and move on." The children - aged six and seven, and twin boys aged 10 - live with their mother in Brighton, but come to Glyndebourne regularly, where they play frisbee with the musicians on the lawns, just as Christie did himself as a child. The twins even appeared on-stage in The Magic Flute.

"I certainly feel as though I'm juggling more balls nowadays," he says wryly. "My children are the most important thing to me, and some of the entertaining that I might have been doing before, I haven't been able to do because I want the boys here. It's all about forward planning and being organised. But I think it's working fine. I have a good housekeeper who helps with the children."

He admits there are often nights when he'd rather eat beans on toast with his sons than a formal dinner with opera's wealthiest fans: "But I knew what was involved before I took it on."

Besides, the Christie family is tight-knit, and his parents rallied to help when Imogen left. In particular, his mother, Mary, returned to help him host the interval drinks and dinners. It was always unlikely that someone so eligible - he appeared on all the Most Eligible Bachelor lists just months after the marriage ended - would remain single for very long.

Last year Hector was quoted in a gossip column saying: "He's got women queuing up, but he hasn't got a girlfriend yet. He's playing it super cool."

But Christie now confirms rumours of a new relationship with Australian singer Danielle de Niese, who played Cleopatra at Glyndebourne in Handel's Giulio Cesare two years ago. "She's an extremely successful singer, and performing all over the place - Paris, Brussels, New York. I see her as often as I can. I'm happier than I've felt for a long while. Good things come out of bad."

Meanwhile, he is attempting to remain super cool - and not always quite achieving it - on a completely different flank altogether. In a fortnight's time the local council will rule on Christie's controversial bid to erect a wind turbine 70 metres high on the Glyndebourne estate, and thereby generate the opera house's entire annual electricity needs.

The plans have met with stiff and sometimes aggressive local opposition (Christie claims that 75 per cent of the local population are in favour and 25 per cent against, though the anti brigade would certainly dispute those figures) and though the row centres essentially on what the thing will look like, it's the tone of the debate that most depresses him.

"Personally I feel they're objects of beauty because of what they do, as well as what they look like," he says, sounding very much like his older, more militant brother.

"I think they are symbols of the age we live in. The local kids have voted in favour of it; they see it as a beacon of the future and I think they're the most important people in all of this. It's about them, not the kind of people who don't like change, which is basically the problem.

"The hostility has been quite highly charged. Some of the letters I've had have been quite heavy, but I do think we need to do something. There's been a lot of talk, but not much action and the consequences of not doing anything are obviously far worse than looking at a wind turbine.

"I hope, if it gets the nod, that it will be a reminder to people who live around here, and to audiences, about how they live. I also think that after six months people will be proud of it. But I've no idea whether we'll get consent. We'll look at appealing if we don't."

The upkeep of the manor house and estate is itself, of course, a time-consuming job in itself. At any time during the opera season, up to 20 people are living here with Christie - directors, designers, technicians and so on, though not singers who require controlled living conditions without smoke or dogs.

He describes it, in rather hippie fashion, as an "artistic commune". "It's a big draughty old house and a bit of a struggle to keep the hot water going. It needs permanent tinkering." I point to a yellowing damp patch in the corner of his fabulous, book-lined study: and the roof? "Luckily, dad did that before he left," he says, peering through the window at thunderous skies. "Which was very good of him."

As I leave, the Downs look splendidly dramatic beneath the rippling cloud, and it actually seems to me - though the picnickers would surely disagree - perfect weather for a spot of solemn, elemental Bach.

Glyndebourne is on until 26 August (www.glyndebourne.com).