Scottish Opera: Albert Herring
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 18/10/2024
Orchestra of Scottish Opera; William Cole (conductor); Glen Cunningham (tenor); Susan Bullock (soprano); Jane Monari (mezzo-soprano); Kira Kaplan (soprano); Francis Church (baritone); Jamie MacDougall (tenor); Edward Jowle (bass-baritone); Ross Cumming (baritone); Chloe Harris (mezzo-soprano); Christine Sjölander (mezzo-soprano); Sarah Power (soprano); Audrey Tsang (soprano); Clíona Cassidy (soprano).
Less than a week after the opening night of Scottish Opera’s hilarious production of Donizetti’s ‘Don Pasquale’, they gave the first of two Glasgow performances of another comedy, Britten’s early (1947) chamber opera ‘Albert Herring’, at the Theatre Royal, having first aired the production at the Lammermuir Festival in early September, reviewed in EMR by my colleague Brian Bannatyne-Scott. The Britten is on an altogether smaller scale, with merely 13 instruments and 13 vocal parts. The original was set in 1900; this production, directed by Daisy Evans, designed by Kat Heath and lit by Jake Wiltshire moves the action to 1990 with a number of other tweaks, comedically successful (if not entirely consistent with the libretto – more about this later). This production marks William Cole’s debut as conductor with the company. Britten’s scoring is pacy, quirky and full of crisply agile wit (but also peppered with suggestive quotations) and it received an idiomatic and very compelling interpretation.
We who have lived through the Television Age and the Golden Age of English sitcoms and sketch shows are familiar with a host of comic stereotypes, so it is perhaps surprising how many of these are anticipated by Eric Crozier’s libretto (although the first ever BBC sitcom, ‘Pinwright’s Progress’, aired 1946-47). Indeed, there is nothing in the libretto to particularly root it in 1900, technically still the Victorian Era. I’ve always thought it has something of a 1950s feel. This production satisfyingly plunders this rich vein of comedic material in the design, the direction and the characterisations. If this approach has detractors, I will not be one of them. I find intergenerational comedy, when it is done well, irresistible.
The eponymous tenor role of the shy, repressed and socially gauche greengrocer’s assistant Albert Herring was performed by Scottish tenor and former Scottish Opera Emerging Artist 2021/22 Glen Cunningham. Well, he has most definitely fully ‘emerged’. Vocally, he is in possession of a fine expressive instrument with rich tone across the tessitura and superb clarity, especially at the top. There is no shortage of comedic templates for the characterisation: Timothy Lumsden in ‘Sorry!’, Granville in ‘Open All Hours’, even Brian in ‘The Life of Brian’. Glen Cunningham’s characterisation, with Daisy Evans’ direction, however, managed to exploit all the sitcom possibilities without any sense of being derivative. His ultimate rebellion and voyage of self-discovery and realisation on a drunken licentious spree was as cathartic for the audience as for the character himself. His final message, as utterly welcome in 2024 as it would have been in the rationing and austerity of 1947 was “There’s plenty for everyone”. A great performance. In the word(s) of Albert himself, “Golly!”
English dramatic soprano Susan Bullock CBE, an unforgettable ‘Old Lady’ in Scottish Opera’s 2022 ‘bonkers but brilliant’ ‘Candide’, was equally and formidably ‘easily assimilated’ in the role of Lady Billows, in a characterisation that drew on Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Spitting Image’, Hyacinth Bucket of ‘Keeping up Appearances’ and, in no small measure, the all-too-real persona of Mary Whitehouse. Irascibly aghast at the supposed moral depravity of the young women of fictional small Suffolk town Loxford (“Not one name but stinking of moral shame”), she is reluctantly persuaded to consider appointing a May King instead of the traditional May Queen for the town’s May Fair festivities, the sole candidate being the virtuous and undeniably virginal (through lack of opportunity) Albert. She donates 25 gold sovereigns as a prize for the uncontested ‘throne’ (which is more of a cutty stool on which the hapless and gangly Albert, clad in virginal white, perches in the feast of Act 2), to illustrate the rewards of virtue. In this production, the feast after the ceremony illustrates instead the hypocrisy of the older generation of Loxford, as it descends into a virtual orgy, with Lady Billows herself leading a conga. When the worm turns after his apocalyptic binge and stands up to her and her fellow-pillars of the community, we cheer. Another great performance by one of the great Brünnhildes.
American mezzo-soprano Jane Monari played Florence Pike, in this production a Personal Assistant and general dogsbody to the imperious Lady Billows. As a stereotypical sidekick of a bully, and bustling with ruthless efficiency, she maintains a salacious dossier on the young women of Loxford, prompting the repeated exercise of the Billows veto for May Queen. Loyally echoing Lady Billows’ every whim and acting as herald of her assumed prerogative, the role has a few great solos and an important contralto line in some of the quartet, quintet and sextet numbers, some of which are ingeniously fugal. A first hearing for me of a very attractive mezzo timbre. We first see her preparing Loxford ‘Village’ Hall (to where all the action is transposed in this production) for the Parish Council meeting (think ‘Vicar of Dibley’) which fails to select a May Queen.
Also American and with an exquisite coloratura soprano voice, Kira Kaplan played the schoolteacher Miss Wordsworth, in this production supposedly a girls’ secondary school teacher of botany. Much hilarity is derived from her attempts to rehearse three unruly teenage schoolgirls to sing a specially-composed anthem to the May King, replicating (or anticipating in the case of the musical) the gag of transposing dropped and extraneous aitches in ‘My Fair Lady’ (‘urricanes ‘ardly hever ‘appen). Her duet with the vicar where they rhapsodically praise the joys of winter turning to spring showed them to be soulmates, with more than a frisson of mutual attraction – at any rate it was beautiful. Her voice also shone in the ensemble numbers. I cannot wait to hear it again. Liverpudlian bass-baritone Francis Church, a compelling ‘Big Man’ (Banco) in Paisley Opera’s ‘Macbeth’ a year ago, was an altogether sunnier Mr Gedge, the vicar. His assertion that “virtue is virtue, no matter where it is found” finally sways the adamant Lady Billows to accept the idea of a May King.
National treasure, tenor Jamie MacDougall, whose voice that evening was first heard before the performance in a recording on the house PA system, asking punters to silence their phones, played an amusing character role, the pompous Mayor, Mr Upfold. When Albert is “missing, presumed dead” after his disappearance on his ‘voyage of self-discovery’, and his floral crown is found in the road crushed by a cart, it is the Mayor who bears it back to village, with solemnity, as if a first class relic in a cortège, prompting an outpouring of despairing grief. In an evening with no shortage of visual humour, this spectacle, more than any other, had me snorting uncontrollably, as again now at the recollection as I type. Mayor he may be, but he defers, as do all his generation, to Lady Billows.
Derbyshire native, bass-baritone and Scottish Opera Emerging Artist 2024/25, Edward Jowle was the somewhat jingoistic PC Budd, couching the role in an unmistakable North of England accent, which would be very odd for a 1900 East Suffolk market town, perhaps less so for a 1990 village. This did afford him the opportunity to deliver the line “’ere she coomes” referring to Lady Billows, and I am probably revealing my age when I confess to being tickled by the probably unintended reference to Bill Oddie’s song “Black Pudding Bertha”, from a hilarious episode of ‘The Goodies’, featuring the fictitious Yorkshire martial art of ‘Eckythump’. Just me? I am probably compounding the faux link by adding that the characterisation matched any of a host of characters from Michael Palin’s ‘Ripping Yarns’ and was easily as engaging. A good bass voice in the texture of the ensemble numbers too.
Scottish baritone Ross Cumming, whose time at the RCS MMus opera and now on his second year as a Scottish Opera Emerging Artist it has been my pleasure to follow for EMR, was charismatic as ever as Albert’s unrepressed fun-loving friend Sid, the butcher’s assistant. Sid’s girlfriend, Nancy the baker’s daughter, was equally charismatically played by another SO Emerging Artist, Australian mezzo Chloe Harris. Sid’s teasing about Albert’s attachment to the apron strings of his domineering mother, and Albert observing Sid and Nancy’s easy flirtatious manner, start him thinking about how he longs to sample these delights, but it is not until they spike his lemonade with rum at the May Fair Feast that he finds the Dutch courage to depart on a spree with his £25 prize money. When Albert fails to return and is feared dead, Nancy is racked with guilt (a beautiful aria) while Sid is fed up of the vain and gruelling search and they quarrel. When Albert finally reappears, they cheer his newfound confidence and defiance and his completion of a rite of passage. Two excellent performances.
Swedish mezzo Christine Sjölander as Albert’s mother had arguably the most complex role and she delivered a strong performance. Yes, his life of “all work and no play” is dictated by her over-protectiveness and she is furious when he is not keen to accept the prize money and the role of May King. But when he goes missing after the May Feast and is feared dead, she is inconsolable (not that the ‘Job’s Comforters’ of her generation are much help). In this production, in the wild excesses of the May Fair Party, she “cops off” with PC Budd and fails to notice Albert is missing until the morning after, causing feelings of guilt and despair (a fine aria). When he reappears, though, she joins in the barrage of questions and blame rained on him by the posse of authority figures, which Albert deflects ably before standing up to them all and dismissing them. Just before his reappearance and for me the highlight of Act 3, if not the opera, is a 9-part elegiac fugue with solos for each character (apart obviously from Albert himself and the 3 schoolgirls). It was skilfully performed and lit. Super.
The three bratty teenage schoolgirls (in characterisations that drew on the body language of Catherine Tate’s ‘Lauren’) replaced the primary schoolkids of the original. Versatile and supremely talented Irish soprano Sarah Power was Emmie, while her compatriot and fellow-soprano Clíona Cassidy, who has sung in the SO chorus since 2012 and is also a composer and experimental vocalist, played Harry (short for Harriet in this production; a boy treble role in the original). Hong Kong soprano Audrey Tsang, whose Fairy Godmother in Cendrillon in the RCS production at the end of January was a coloratura triumph, made her Scottish Opera debut as Cis.
Purists will point to the inconsistencies and anachronisms that result from the shift to 1990 and the other tweaks in the production and I want to address these. The currency in £ s/d (with farthings) in the libretto is an obvious example of an anachronism. The vagueness of the size of Loxford is another oddity: small enough to have a ‘village’ hall, yet large enough to have a mayor and an urban district council, plus a secondary school (with a stand-alone subject called ‘Botany’). All very strange. Then again, though, was ‘Botany’ a primary school subject in 1900? I, for one, don’t care. The hilarity that we get from this production in return for our suspension of disbelief is a rich enough reward.
In May of this year, the shop scene from Act 1 (where Sid teases Albert and flirts with Nancy, causing Albert to consider what he has been missing) was featured in this year’s RCS MMus Opera Scenes production and it caused me to start to reconsider my attitude to the opera. Despite this scene being transferred to a stall in a jumble sale at the village hall, this Scottish Opera production has completed the transformation of my attitude. I am blown away by the ingenuity of the instrumental and vocal part writing, the scope for imaginative comedic adaptation, with a commensurate underlying wealth of deeper human emotions. I now consider it to be, far from a mere dabble in farce, an early masterpiece. My eternal thanks to both RCS and Scottish Opera for the lesson.
Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic.