by Benjamin Britten

February 2006
The Abrons Arts Center

Read press reviews of this production.

credits

Conductor Neal Goren
Production David Schweizer
Scenic Design Riccardo Hernandez

CAST
Albert Herring Matt Morgan
Lady Billows Karen Huffstodt
Mrs. Herring Barbara Dever
Mr. Upfold John Easterlin
Florence Pike Elizabeth Grohowski
Police Superintendent Budd Eric Jordan
Sid Timothy Kuhn
Miss Wordsworth Jeanine Thames
Nancy Leah Wool
Mr. Gedge Michael Zegarski
Emmie, Cis, and Harry Members of Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus

Costume Design David Zinn
Lighting Design Scott Zielinski
Make-up Design Hagen Linss

conductor's notes
What a joy it has been to prepare Albert Herring and present it to you! The entire cast and design team have loved getting to know the people who make Britten's fictional English town of Loxford tick, and the tics that make the Loxfordians tick. We hope our delight transmits itself to you.

While Britten's opera is peopled by characters whom we might consider theatrical or over-the-top, they are precisely the sort of people we have met on many occasions. It is this sense of recognition that compels us to project ourselves into the story. In addition to the recognition of familiar types, we all empathize with Albert's striving for autonomy: Albert's journey may be easier or more difficult than our own, but we have all made a version of it.

That Albert's journey is for the most part successful makes this opera a comedy. Indeed, for my money, Albert Herring is one of the two great operatic comedies of the 20th Century, Puccini's Gianni Schicchi being the other. And if we move our starting date back a mere seven years, we can insert Verdi's Falstaff into that crown.

These works are not so dissimilar as they may at first appear, for all three center on the pursuit of sex and money. In Falstaff, Sir John cannot seem to get enough of either, and while Schicchi's Lauretta and Rinuccio are young enough to be interested only in the former, their older relatives have advanced to the latter. At the core of Britten's opera is Albert's quest for adulthood, of which sex is just one facet, while pecuniary interests are embodied in the character of Mrs. Herring.

To me, the most significant feature shared by the three operas is that there is not a single unlovable character to be found among them. Eccentric, yes; iniquitous, no. Indeed, their individual eccentricities make them all the more lovable. While I might not want to trade places with the husband of Albert Herring's Lady Billows (if one can imagine such a personage), who wouldn't enjoy sipping sherry with the Lady herself, if only for the opportunity to talk about it later?

The importance of community is another point in common. While the three operas contain wonderful arias and duets, what lingers in the memory are the set pieces sung by the entire cast, punctuated by individual voices. Narratively, too, they are ensembles: their stories may be filled with oddballs, but those oddballs are all part of a community that contains and accepts them. At the end of Albert Herring, though our protagonist is rejected by his elders, there is never any doubt that he will be welcomed back into the fold soon enough. The only question remaining is which of the elders will he most resemble as he matures, and that is for the listener to ponder.

These colorful characters are painted in similarly memorable orchestral colors. We hear Falstaff's wine trickling down his throat and, in Schicchi, the lapping of Rinuccio's beloved Arno River. In Albert Herring, every harrumph and guffaw - not to mention one of the sexiest kisses in opera - is depicted, and all with an orchestra of just over a dozen players.

Perhaps it is Britten's, Verdi's, and Puccini's common vision of a welcoming, heterogeneous community, secure enough with itself to encompass all these big personalities, that moves us. With their characters, we share a feeling of belonging. In a sense, this is the democratic (and comedic) ideal. We may or may not be drawn to our individual neighbors, but we accept them and even break bread with them, knowing that in ways both comfortable and uncomfortable they define us. - Neal Goren

director's notes

FEAR OF COMEDY
Ever wonder why Albert Herring, a cornucopia of thrilling ensemble singing and genuinely compelling story-telling, is not often performed? Could it be the very notion at its core? A Benjamin Britten comedy? This brooding twentieth-century genius - harbinger of the dark spirit that speaks of men and their thwarted yearnings (Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw) - turning his musical high beams onto a comedic landscape? It gives us pause somehow. Seems improbable.

But EXACTLY! That is the unique experience of this piece. For what is comedy if not the pain of living, magnified to an absurd degree? And what is this exuberant yet haunted chamber opera if not the fiercely comedic work of a very serious composer?

It took Britten a while to find a framework for this impulse. After Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia, he expressed a clear desire to work on something lighter, but only after wrestling with and rejecting a treatment of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park was his librettist, Eric Crozier, able to tempt him with the Maupassant story "Madame Husson's May King." With its small town setting, albeit in France, the story's outline is much the same as the opera's, except that the Albert character ends up a blithering drunk, wandering the streets for the rest of his life. Britten and Crozier seized the story and actually lightened it, injecting their deliciously venomous attitude toward the prudery of British provincial life. Written in 1947, but set at the turn of the century, Albert Herring let Britten pour out his heartfelt blend of cynicism and nostalgia regarding the smugness of Edwardian England and Empire. And the pure energy of creation overtook this team! The entire piece was written, cast, and performed in the space of only eight months. Britten and Crozier worked with old friends; a British version of "Let's put on a show!" became the governing impulse here. You can feel it in the exhilaration of the musical set pieces and the headlong rhythm of the libretto.

You can also feel the other Britten in the dark undertow of Albert's stifled longings for - what? In 1947 a lot of things still dared not speak their names, so let us just say life. The exquisite tension between the rampant satire of the ensemble scenes and the precarious course of Albert's private journey gives us the essence of Albert Herring: both an antic and a dark comedy. Are they inconsistent? About as much as life is.

For this production, we have moved the time frame up to postwar Britain: the early 50's. It's much the same 50-year leap back in time for us as Britten made back then - and more or less the time in which he wrote the piece. Interestingly, it remains very much a time held hostage to the social stigmas that define Albert Herring. A kiss was still a very big deal, a risk. Remember? We could not help wanting the piece to express a bit of our own nostalgia.

But Albert Herring could be played as now, or then, or whenever.

It speaks of a yearning to break free of the prison of home that is timeless, and painful.

And yes, intrinsically comical. - David Schweizer