CHAN 10036 BOOK FRONT/BACK.qxd 3/5/07 12:01 pm Page 1 CHAN 10036(2) CHAN 10036 BOOK.qxd 3/5/07 12:05 pm Page 2 Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) Albert Herring, Op. 39 Lebrecht Collection Lebrecht An opera in three acts Libretto by Eric Crozier, after a story by Guy de Maupassant Albert Herring ......................................................................................................................James Gilchrist tenor Nancy, the baker’s daughter ............................................................Pamela Helen Stephen mezzo-soprano Sid, the butcher’s assistant ....................................................................................Roderick Williams baritone Lady Billows, an elderly autocrat ................................................................................Susan Bullock soprano Florence Pike, Lady Billows’ housekeeper ....................................................Sally Burgess mezzo-soprano Mr Gedge, the vicar ................................................................................................................Alan Opie baritone Superintendent Budd................................................................................................Stephen Richardson bass Mr Upfold, the Mayor................................................................................................................Robert Tear tenor Miss Wordsworth, the headmistress..........................................................................Rebecca Evans soprano Mrs Herring, a greengrocer ................................................................................Anne Collins mezzo-soprano Emmie, a girl......................................................................................................................................Yvette Bonner Cis, a girl........................................................................................................................................Rebecca Bottone Harry, a boy ......................................................................................................................................Gregory Monk City of London Sinfonia Richard Hickox Benjamin Britten 3 CHAN 10036 BOOK.qxd 3/5/07 12:05 pm Page 4 COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page Time Page Act II Act I Scene 1 Scene 1 22 (Inside a marquee…) 2:21 115 1 (The morning room at Lady Billows’ house in Loxford ) 2:01 41 23 Florence: ‘For three precious weeks’ 0:54 117 2 Florence: ‘Doctor Jessop’s midwife…’ 2:33 43 24 Sid: ‘That’s a fine sight for sore eyes!’ 2:41 119 3 Miss Wordsworth: ‘I hope we’re not too early’ 2:42 45 25 Miss Wordsworth: ‘Quickly, quickly’ 3:26 121 4 Lady Billows: ‘Stuffy! Tobacco stink!’ 2:45 53 26 Nancy: ‘I don’t think you ought!’ 1:03 127 5 Lady Billows: ‘Now then! Notebook, Florence!’ 2:49 53 27 (Bells offstage) Nancy: ‘Quick, here they are!’ 2:39 129 6 Vicar: ‘The first suggestion on my list’ 4:46 55 28 Miss Wordsworth: ‘Husssh!… Harold Wood!’ 1:34 133 7 Lady Billows: ‘Is this all you can bring?’ 3:12 65 29 Lady Billows: ‘Come, let’s sit down’ 1:24 137 8 Superintendent: ‘Begging your pardon’ 4:24 67 TT 72:30 9 Vicar: ‘Virtue, says Holy Writ’ 2:03 71 10 Lady Billows: ‘Right! We’ll have him!’ 3:03 73 11 Interlude 3:08 77 Scene 2 COMPACT DISC TWO 12 Emmie, Cis and Harry: ‘Bounce me high’ 2:27 77 13 Sid: ‘Shop! Hi! Albert!’ 1:57 83 Act II 14 Sid: ‘Did you ever have a pint at the local?’ 1:41 85 Scene 1 (continued ) 15 Albert: ‘Sid I’m sorry but…’ 3:36 87 1 Lady Billows: ‘I’m full of happiness’ 3:49 139 16 Sid and Nancy: ‘We’ll walk to the spinney’ 2:00 93 2 Mayor: ‘As representing our local Council’ 2:03 141 17 Albert: ‘He’s much too busy’ 2:08 95 3 Miss Wordsworth: ‘My heart leaps up with joy to see’ 2:11 143 18 Emmie: ‘Mum wants two penn’oth of potherbs’ 1:36 97 4 Superintendent: ‘Erhumph…’ 1:16 145 19 Florence: ‘Good morning, young man!’ 1:41 101 5 Mum: ‘Go on, Albert!’ 2:07 147 20 Lady Billows: ‘We bring great news to you’ 2:49 105 6 Vicar: ‘Albert the Good!’ 2:34 147 21 Mum: ‘Well, think of that, my lad’ 2:49 109 7 Sid: ‘Bring the plates! Quickly now!’ 7:34 157 4 5 CHAN 10036 BOOK.qxd 3/5/07 12:05 pm Page 6 Britten: Albert Herring Time Page Although there are comic episodes in his other more potent and he decides to kick over the traces Scene 2 operas, notably A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Britten’s and go on the town. Albert’s rebellion is one night of 8 Albert: ‘Albert the Good!’ 4:51 157 only full-length comic opera is Albert Herring. It was drunkenness and dalliance. In the original story composed in 1947 for the new-formed English Opera Isidore’s dissipation lasts a week, is much more 9 Albert: ‘Why did she stare…?’ 2:50 161 Group to perform at Glyndebourne where The Rape of drastic and he dies of delirium tremens. Crozier took 10 Nancy: ‘You oughtn’t to whistle’ 1:47 163 Lucretia had had its première in July 1946. Eric the name Albert Herring from a grocer’s shop-front he 11 Sid: ‘Come along, darling’ 2:16 165 Crozier, one of the directors of the English Opera had seen in Tunstall. The formidable lady of the 12 Albert: ‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’ 5:24 167 Group, had been impressed by Peter Pears’s manor, Lady Billows, was named after a British Council 13 Mum: ‘Albert! Albert? Fast asleep, poor kid!’ 3:06 169 performances, as Ferrando and Vasˇek respectively, in official in Switzerland. Mr Gedge was a vicar in the Sadler’s Wells wartime productions of Così fan London whom Crozier and Britten knew. Harold Wood Act III tutte and The Bartered Bride, and suggested to is a railway station, Cissie Woodger a Snape girl and 14 (The following afternoon…) 2:13 171 Britten that he should compose a comic opera, as a Nancy was Nancy Evans, who created the role. Those 15 Emmie: ‘Is she asleep?’ 3:16 171 vehicle for Pears, based on Guy de Maupassant’s who are antipathetic to the opera find all this too short story Le Rosier de Madame Husson. In 1932, cosy, twee and parochial, but they are in a minority. 16 Sid: ‘What the hell d’you think I am?’ 1:49 175 this had been the basis of a film (starring the great Albert Herring has proved popular outside England, 17 Sid: ‘How’s the manhunt?’ 1:15 177 French comedian Fernandel) which they had all seen for all communities recognise the characters as 18 Mum: ‘Have you found him?’ 3:01 179 and enjoyed. On 20 October 1946 Crozier wrote to universal archetypes. 19 Mum: ‘All that I did!’ 2:42 181 Nancy Evans, the mezzo-soprano with whom he was The first draft of Act I was ready by December 20 Lady Billows: ‘Fools!’ 2:32 183 in love and later married, that the libretto was 1946 and Britten began to compose immediately. He 21 All: ‘In the midst of life is death’ 5:24 187 ‘roughly knocked into shape and now it only has to and Crozier worked closely together, some of the time 22 All: ‘Albert…?’ 2:57 191 be written’. Britten had given him a copy of Boito’s in Switzerland. Parts of the libretto had to be re- 23 Albert: ‘I can’t remember everything’ 5:44 197 libretto for Verdi’s Falstaff as a model. written because music had already been composed. 24 Sid: ‘Hi! That’s my girl’ 2:02 203 Crozier transferred the action from Gisors in The opera was completed in May 1947, when TT 74:57 Normandy to ‘Loxford’ in Britten’s native Suffolk in rehearsals began. Pears, of course, was Albert. Joan April and May 1900, but Maupassant’s plot remained Cross sang Lady Billows, with Gladys Parr as her unchanged in outline. A lack of virtuous girls for the housekeeper-companion, Florence Pike. The role of position of May Queen results in the election of a the school headmistress, Miss Wordsworth, was mother-dominated youth of unassailable chastity; created by Margaret Ritchie, Sid and Nancy by Albert Herring. But during the celebration of his Frederick Sharp and Nancy Evans, the Vicar, ‘coronation’, his lemonade is laced with something appropriately enough, by William Parsons, the Mayor 6 7 CHAN 10036 BOOK.qxd 3/5/07 12:05 pm Page 8 and Police Superintendent Budd by Roy Ashton and becomes ‘Hymns Ancient and Modern’ personified. the Vicar and Miss Wordsworth outdo each other in chief autobiographical features of the opera. ‘I feel Norman Lumsden and Mrs Herring by Betsy de la The headmistress, Miss Wordsworth, bubbles apt quotations; ‘And lo! the winter is past!’, ‘The rain Ben couldn’t have written some of the music without Porte. Scenery and costumes were by John Piper. vacuously to flute accompaniment. Superintendent is over and gone’, ‘Virtue is rarer than pearls’. Miss the consciousness of our tremendous love for each The first performance, produced by Frederick Budd’s platitudes cause eruptions on the double-bass. Wordsworth quotes her eponymous poet in Albert’s other’, Crozier wrote to Nancy Evans in April 1947. Ashton and conducted by Britten, was on 20 June In the same way that Britten’s music taps deep- coronation scene (‘My heart leaps up’), while other The other personal element was Britten’s relationship 1947 when Glyndebourne’s owner, John Christie, rooted and subconscious responses in listeners, parts of the libretto betray admiration for Auden. with his over-possessive mother, who had died ten disconcerted by an opera partly set in a greengrocer’s Crozier’s libretto draws fruitfully on many literary More esoteric are the connections with T.S. Eliot’s ‘The years earlier. Albert’s ‘That’ll do, Mum!’ was Britten shop, met some members of the audience with a long sources. Writing about Albert Herring in The Opera Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. Eliot’s anti-hero is cutting free too. face and the words: ‘This isn’t our kind of thing, you Quarterly (Vol. 5, No.1, 1987), Joe K. Law identified afflicted by many of Albert’s inadequacies; ‘Should I, Albert himself is another of Britten’s ‘outsiders’ know.’ His attitude of de haut en bas was reflected in three works of literature (besides Maupassant) as after tea and cakes and ices,/Have the strength to and from that point of view, like all the greatest comic some of the reviews.