Each year, at the initiative of Lady Billows, a "May Queen" is elected in the town of Loxford. She is supposed to be the most virtuous girl, but for lack of suitable virgins, the selection fails, and Albert Herring, the obedient son of his mother, is proclaimed the "King of May". A young man becomes the talk of the town - with a wreath of innocence and a £25 prize. Then comes the devil, who, with the hands of his friends, pours rum into Albert's lemonade, and it does its deed.

 

It is a brilliant operatic satire of British Victorian society. Albert Herring is an exuberant grotesque, accompanied by the lush sound of a chamber orchestra, and featuring masterfully recomposed vocal parts. The charming music is bubbling with ideas and wit, and the inspirational sources of early music enrich its modern language. It features a parody of French grand opera, cabaret, baroque opera pathos and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. In this ironic caricature, however, there are also more serious overtones of the problem that the composer outlined in his first opera, Peter Grimes: the conflict between the individual and the society that both drives him to his actions and determines them at the same time.

 

The Albert Herring project was created in cooperation between the SND Opera Studio and the Opera Studio of the Academy of Performing Arts. The cast includes students from the SND Opera Studio, the Academy of Performing Arts, and members and guests of the SND Opera.

 

Proud partner of the SND Opera Studio