"This is English National Opera's first production shared between London and Greater Manchester where the company has been obliged to plan to move its base, following Arts Council England's diktat. The choice of a relatively small-scale opera necessary in the circumstances means it was never going to be the kind of show to announce the new era with a bang."
"Albert Herring is Britten's 1947 work based on a slender 19th-century French story about a mummy's boy suddenly finding freedom calls for only a small orchestra and no chorus, so the company won't be heading en masse to Salford next week. It's regular fare at music colleges thanks to its large and even cast, but this staging, surprisingly, is an ENO first."
English National Opera presented Britten's Albert Herring as a modest, semi-staged production shared between London and Greater Manchester because of enforced relocation planning. The opera requires only a small orchestra and no chorus and suits compact staging. Simple cork-boarded walls and labeled interiors conjure Albert's stifling Suffolk village, set in a 1950s postwar period. Emma Bell's Lady Billows is a khaki-clad tyrant with a Dad's Army flavour. The story follows self-appointed moral guardian Lady B attempting to elect a virtuous May Queen, leading to shop-boy Albert's drink being spiked and an almighty bender. A conceit of a studio audience and a stage manager supplying sound effects adds comic framing.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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