Scottish Opera, 22/10/2024

Britten : Albert Herring

The Orchestra of Scottish Opera

William Cole

It seems a great pity that this new production of Albert Herring is only getting five performances in total; two last September as part of the Lammermuir Festival, two in Glasgow, of which the second was tonight, and one in Edinburgh.  Furthermore, this does not appear to be a co-production, which means it's not guaranteed a showing with any other company.  Which is a shame, because this was a delight from start to finish, deft and witty, skilfully performed at every level and well worth seeing.

Albert Herring was Benjamin Britten's third (discounting Paul Bunyan, which is a bit of a curate's egg of a piece) opera.  Like The Rape of Lucretia, which preceded it, it's a chamber opera, requiring only 13 singers and 13 instrumentalists, which was probably as much a reflection of the times (1947) as much as anything else.  It was written for performance at Glyndebourne, and resources were not plentiful.  This does not make Herring a small piece, by any means.  Those 26 players are more than enough to fill a standard opera house, and in this production, the orchestra was raised, not completely out of the pit, but significantly higher and clear of the overhang, and the musicians given a uniform, so they appeared almost as if they were the village band participating in the festivities.  

Director Daisy Evans chose to update the action from the original 1900 to somewhere in the late 1980s, judging from hair and costumes (particularly colours - turquoise was very evident).  The three schoolchildren of the original became three teenage schoolgirls who would do St. Trinian's proud, while Florence Pike became Lady Billows's private secretary, rather than her housekeeper, and teacher Miss Wordsworth was a little hippy-dippy, but very much in sympathy with the local vicar.  The rest of the characters hardly needed any change at all, their types as recognisable now as they were then, regardless of the era.  There were a few things in the libretto that clashed a little with setting, but nothing very serious, and the staging was a single set, a village hall, complete with small, proscenium-arched stage.  That stretched the imagination a bit when it came to the Herrings' greengrocer's shop, but otherwise functioned perfectly well.

L to R: Jamie MacDougall (Mr. Upfold), Kira Kaplan (Miss Wordsworth), Edward Jowle (PC Budd), Susan Bullock (Lady Billows) and Francis Church (Mr. Gedge)
Albert Herring, Scottish Opera
(© Mihaela Bodlovic, 2024)

The performances were first rate throughout, and I could simply list the entire cast.  However, what was particularly notable was that four of the cast were members of Scottish Opera's Emerging Artists programme, with a warm and sympathetic Nancy from Chloe Harris playing nicely off the cheeky, confident Sid of Ross Cumming, Kira Kaplan's gleaming soprano bringing light to Miss Wordsworth (almost billing and cooing with a lyrically effulgent Francis Church as Mr. Gedge), and Edward Jowle a robust, resonant PC Budd with a nice sense of comic timing.  Jane Monari's dark mezzo (almost a true contralto) made a good foil for Susan Bullock's steely-voiced and authoritarian Lady Billows, whose delicately lavender-tinted 'do' and smug expression made her seem like a cross between Dame Edna Everage and Hyacinth Bucket.  Last, but certainly not least, Glen Cunningham made the most of Albert, who has to spend quite long periods of time in visibly uncomfortable silence, but then emerge from his shell and unburden himself to the audience, if not to his on-stage companions, in a couple of very significant monologues.  Cunningham negotiated all this very well with a clear, bright tone and excellent articulation, and the end of the second act was especially well done.

With such a small instrumental ensemble, every player is a soloist, and there is nowhere to hide in this music.  The members of the Scottish Opera Orchestra played superbly, crisp, clear and precise, sardonic and poetic in turns, with conductor William Cole keeping all the tricky twists and turns well under control.  I still don't understand why, in an evening when there were laughs aplenty, no one laughed at the quote from Wagner's Tristan, when Sid spikes Albert's lemonade, but the 'night music' at the end of Act 2 was particularly beautiful.  This was a bright, droll and endearing performance, of the kind of quality you'd wish to experience at every night at the opera.

[Next: 31st October]