Benjamin Britten, Albert Herring (1947)

So apparently after The Rape of Lucretia, Britten understandably wanted to do something lighter, and thus we have his first comedy, based, of all things, on Maupassant story transplanted to England.

The plot is that all the bluenosed bigwigs in town want to choose a May Queen for their annual festival, but they rule out all the local girls as too slutty. What to do? Well, someone suggests, how about a May King? There's this Albert kid who's sufficently virtuous! He's a bit dim, but hey. Well, Albert is neither dim nor "virtuous" in their sense; he's just repressed by his puritanical mother. Nonetheless, he's not too keen on this idea in spite of the cash prize. However, he's dragooned into doing it anyway. But when his pal Sid and Sid's girlfriend Nancy decide to loosen him up by spiking his lemonade at the party--well, things get interesting! Wait, seriously? Sid and Nancy? Yup. One of those things that you feel should mean something, but pretty clearly doesn't. Alas. The ultimate message is: if you repress people to much, they'll eventually act out in explosive ways. It's easy to see how this could have tragic results, but this is pure comedy.

I'll come straight to the point: this opera is incredibly charming and delightful, and pretty risque for the time, I should think. I do think that the third act--where Albert has disappeared and everyone's worried OH NO HE MUST BE DEAD--probably goes on a bit longer than it needs to (seriously, given the tone of the first two acts, it would be indescribably strange if this suddenly turned into a tragedy), but that's a minor criticism. I watched this Operavision production (no longer online, alas) from the Royal College of Music. A few of the parts are sung by older singers, but most of them are by young people just starting out in their careers, and considering, it's stunning how good they all are. No amateur hour this. Society may be falling apart, but we sure are still capable of producing quality singers! If that's any comfort. It originally takes place in 1900, but here it's been updated to--as far as I can tell--more or less the time of the opera's composition. I suppose some of the attitudes on display here are perhaps rendered a little archaic, but honestly, I didn't know the milieu had been changed while I was watching, and it felt entirely natural.

Hmm.  Think I'll space out the Britten operas a little, but I do at some point intend to go through everything or more or less everything that he did in that vein.