HAVE YOU EVER noticed the suspicious similarity in tune between Là ci darem la mano, from Don Giovanni, and Monty Python’s lumberjack song? Sneaky blighter, that Mozart, to steal his most famous aria from a Terry Jones/Michael Palin/Fred Tomlinson ditty.

I raise the point because, along with opening the batting for England, it is one of my great, unfulfilled dreams to play the Don at the Glyndebourne opera festival. There’s only one snag: my singing ability is closer to one of Monty Python’s hankie-headed Gumbies than to Plácido Domingo. Still, I’ll keep my fingers crossed and practise my scales. Should a mishap occur to Bryn Terfel, then Glyndebourne can give me a call.

The new season opens on Monday with Tristan und Isolde and runs to the end of August, during which time hundreds of penguin-suited toffs with packed picnic hampers will descend on the East Sussex country house.

Those who don’t fly in by helicopter or drive to Glyndebourne will probably come via the railway station at Lewes, four miles away, which has its own rich musical heritage. Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones drummer, used to live here, and Arthur Brown, the 1960s singer whose “Crazy World” period spawned the psychedelic hit Fire, still does, and apparently likes to spook the locals by shouting at his echo in the church.

Lewes — pronounced the way Inspector Morse used to address his sidekick — is the beautiful but small county town of East Sussex, noted for its impressive Norman castle and excessively steep hills. George IV, when Prince Regent, chose to drive a coach and four down the steepest and narrowest of these hills (Keere Street) as a bet. And they called his father mad! Apart from Arthur Brown, Lewes has another link to fire — the burning of 17 Protestants in the reign of Bloody Mary, commemorated each year by one of the biggest Guy Fawkes fireworks displays in the country; a papal effigy is a favourite sacrifice to the flames.

Lewes prospered during the Napoleonic Wars, when its foundries churned out ordnance and the local sheep were sheared non-stop for uniforms. One famous inhabitant was Thomas Paine, whose book The Rights of Man is largely responsible for Britain being America’s poodle rather than the other way round. He worked in Lewes as an excise officer and often won the prize for being the “most obstinate haranguer” at the Headstrong Club debating society. Modern locals who could claim that crown include Piers Morgan, Editor of the Daily Mirror, who went to school here, and Norman Baker, the MP whose questions on Peter Mandelson’s links to the Hindujas triggered Mandy’s second resignation.

“Most of East Sussex’s celebrities — the Fatboy Slims and Paul McCartneys — live in Brighton,” says Tim Page-Ratcliffe, of Strutt & Parker. “People who live around Lewes want a quieter life and a change from the pace of London. There’s a huge shortage of good properties above the million-pound mark at the moment. People tend to buy long-term family homes round here, rather than trading them every few years for a profit.”

The South Coast estate agent Cubitt & West offers an imposing whitewashed five-bedroom Regency house on Malling Street, on the outskirts of town, for £750,000. Strutt & Parker has just received an offer on a pretty Grade I listed manor house at Swanborough, two miles outside Lewes, which had a guide price of £1.65 million.

There are a few really grand places a couple of miles farther into the countryside. At Berwick there is a beautiful medieval manor house with 21 acres of land, a swimming pool, a tennis court and a moat for £2.5 million, while a 16th-century farmhouse at Blackboys, with 38 acres of land, is on for £1.25 million. The property is owned by Viscountess Marchwood, whose husband has been chairman of Moët Hennessy for the past six years. Having ready access to champagne is vital if you visit Glyndebourne, and if I end up topping the bill you can always use the corks to plug up your ears.

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