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Albert Herring: A Comic Opera in Three Acts
Vocal/piano score.
372 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
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About the author
Benjamin Britten
381 books6 followersEdward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, Order of Merit, Order of the Companions of Honour, was an English composer, conductor, and pianist.
Britten's interests as a composer were wide-ranging; he produced important music in such varied genres as orchestral, choral, solo vocal, chamber and instrumental, as well as film music. He also took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, and was a fine pianist and conductor.
Britten's interests as a composer were wide-ranging; he produced important music in such varied genres as orchestral, choral, solo vocal, chamber and instrumental, as well as film music. He also took a great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, and was a fine pianist and conductor.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 6, 2016
Just out of World War Two, let us sing the greatness of Great Britain and the still in existence Empire. The greatness and also the naïve innocence of the old Celtic traditions of the Maypole, May Day and of course May Queen. But today it is difficult to find a pure, innocent, virginal female teenager who could qualify for such a rite, such a choice, such a symbolic designation. So the poor villagers and their local noble lady are obliged to change their target and aim at a May King. And sure enough there is one who qualifies, though we do not know why that actually happened.
This Albert Herring, with no father any more and only a possessive control freak mother is the next greengrocer of the village when his mother decides to retire. More than a simpleton, since he knows how to count and he’d better do so since everyone is trying to cheat him out of what they owe him, he is nicely autistic more than anything else: he has difficulties establishing a relation with any third person apart from himself and his mother. He is shy they say. He is hard working and one-pointed but he does not have any vision of the future: He lacks ambition – maybe – they say. And he does not know at all what is beyond the narrow pale of his mother: he has never had any alcohol since his mother is a teetotaler. He has never gone out to a pub or anywhere else since he works for his mother from sunrise to beyond sunset. He has never approached or been approached by a girl or woman since he is the untouchable of his mother.
And the opera turns to his disadvantage and to our merry pleasure since he is a fool in the first act, a fair idiot in the second act and then he disappears to come back a transformed person who has discovered there are many other things in life beyond his mother and her narrow-minded vision of her living death and her cane if not cudgel imposed authority. Good riddance and welcome home, finally home, your home, the way you make it and not the way your widowed mother wants to impose it.
The text is light and light-hearted, and yet it makes fun of British fundamentalism based on “no alcohol, we are teetotalers” and “no **fleshy contact**, we are British” and “no free thinking or atheistic illusions, we are Anglicans.” How could that fundamentalism survive in Great Britain so long with pub opening hours reduced to nearly nothing up to the 1980s when they were finally slightly extended and liberalized though they will be really free only in the 21sy century.
What is amazing is that two of the basic themes of Benjamin Britten’s operas are already all contained in this early one. Albert Herring is a stranger in his own village, kept apart, on the side and the target of jokes, tricks, and other pranks, like making him drink rum laced in his lemonade, or stealing his apples, or getting herbs for free by just forgetting to pay before leaving. He is also a stranger to his mother because she does not know he is a man and she treats him as if he were a pet, a working pet mind you, hence a domestic animal like an ox, and he is as strong as one if not two.
The second theme is of course the denunciation of ethical, religious, moral fundamentalism and particularly the way some women who think they are the mothers of society like Lady Billows, not one billow but several large undulating mass of something, typically cloud, smoke, or steam, or maybe a vast inflated balloon billowing in the hot air of her moralistic discourse, fanned like a moralistic fire by the local Mayor, the local Vicar and the local Superintendent, or is it only a simple Constable? Three men aided by a fourth female character, the local teacher, Miss Wordsworth who is worth what words are worth, not much indeed since they only exist in dictionaries. And of course a real mother, the possessive control freak that she is, is seen as stifling, choking and smothering her own son into asocial suffocation with only one intention: to make him a money-earner for the family, that is to say for herself.
These two themes are extremely present in many operas with one absent here: the killing or abducting father figure, the third side of the trinity Benjamin Britten used so much all the time along with pentacles and pentads like the five selectors of the new May King: Lady Billows, Mr. Gedge the Vicar, Superintendent Budd, Mr. Upfold the Mayor and Miss Wordsworth the Head Teacher, clearly opposed to the three people around Albert, Sid, Nancy and Mrs. Herring, and the three kids from the village, Emmie, Cis and Harry. And if you add Florence Pike, the Housekeeper of the Lady, you reach thirteen fateful blind deaf and not dumb at all, meaning mute, though quite dumb meaning besotted characters. And their names are just a bunch of funny puns.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
This Albert Herring, with no father any more and only a possessive control freak mother is the next greengrocer of the village when his mother decides to retire. More than a simpleton, since he knows how to count and he’d better do so since everyone is trying to cheat him out of what they owe him, he is nicely autistic more than anything else: he has difficulties establishing a relation with any third person apart from himself and his mother. He is shy they say. He is hard working and one-pointed but he does not have any vision of the future: He lacks ambition – maybe – they say. And he does not know at all what is beyond the narrow pale of his mother: he has never had any alcohol since his mother is a teetotaler. He has never gone out to a pub or anywhere else since he works for his mother from sunrise to beyond sunset. He has never approached or been approached by a girl or woman since he is the untouchable of his mother.
And the opera turns to his disadvantage and to our merry pleasure since he is a fool in the first act, a fair idiot in the second act and then he disappears to come back a transformed person who has discovered there are many other things in life beyond his mother and her narrow-minded vision of her living death and her cane if not cudgel imposed authority. Good riddance and welcome home, finally home, your home, the way you make it and not the way your widowed mother wants to impose it.
The text is light and light-hearted, and yet it makes fun of British fundamentalism based on “no alcohol, we are teetotalers” and “no **fleshy contact**, we are British” and “no free thinking or atheistic illusions, we are Anglicans.” How could that fundamentalism survive in Great Britain so long with pub opening hours reduced to nearly nothing up to the 1980s when they were finally slightly extended and liberalized though they will be really free only in the 21sy century.
What is amazing is that two of the basic themes of Benjamin Britten’s operas are already all contained in this early one. Albert Herring is a stranger in his own village, kept apart, on the side and the target of jokes, tricks, and other pranks, like making him drink rum laced in his lemonade, or stealing his apples, or getting herbs for free by just forgetting to pay before leaving. He is also a stranger to his mother because she does not know he is a man and she treats him as if he were a pet, a working pet mind you, hence a domestic animal like an ox, and he is as strong as one if not two.
The second theme is of course the denunciation of ethical, religious, moral fundamentalism and particularly the way some women who think they are the mothers of society like Lady Billows, not one billow but several large undulating mass of something, typically cloud, smoke, or steam, or maybe a vast inflated balloon billowing in the hot air of her moralistic discourse, fanned like a moralistic fire by the local Mayor, the local Vicar and the local Superintendent, or is it only a simple Constable? Three men aided by a fourth female character, the local teacher, Miss Wordsworth who is worth what words are worth, not much indeed since they only exist in dictionaries. And of course a real mother, the possessive control freak that she is, is seen as stifling, choking and smothering her own son into asocial suffocation with only one intention: to make him a money-earner for the family, that is to say for herself.
These two themes are extremely present in many operas with one absent here: the killing or abducting father figure, the third side of the trinity Benjamin Britten used so much all the time along with pentacles and pentads like the five selectors of the new May King: Lady Billows, Mr. Gedge the Vicar, Superintendent Budd, Mr. Upfold the Mayor and Miss Wordsworth the Head Teacher, clearly opposed to the three people around Albert, Sid, Nancy and Mrs. Herring, and the three kids from the village, Emmie, Cis and Harry. And if you add Florence Pike, the Housekeeper of the Lady, you reach thirteen fateful blind deaf and not dumb at all, meaning mute, though quite dumb meaning besotted characters. And their names are just a bunch of funny puns.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
August 6, 2016
The Libretto is a mine in itself.
Just out of World War Two, let us sing the greatness of Great Britain and the still in existence Empire. The greatness and also the naïve innocence of the old Celtic traditions of the Maypole, May Day and of course May Queen. But today it is difficult to find a pure, innocent, virginal female teenager who could qualify for such a rite, such a choice, such a symbolic designation. So the poor villagers and their local noble lady are obliged to change their target and aim at a May King. And sure enough there is one who qualifies, though we do not know why that actually happened.
This Albert Herring, with no father any more and only a possessive control freak mother is the next greengrocer of the village when his mother decides to retire. More than a simpleton, since he knows how to count and he’d better do so since everyone is trying to cheat him out of what they owe him, he is nicely autistic more than anything else: he has difficulties establishing a relation with any third person apart from himself and his mother. He is shy they say. He is hard working and one-pointed but he does not have any vision of the future: He lacks ambition – maybe – they say. And he does not know at all what is beyond the narrow pale of his mother: he has never had any alcohol since his mother is a teetotaler. He has never gone out to a pub or anywhere else since he works for his mother from sunrise to beyond sunset. He has never approached or been approached by a girl or woman since he is the untouchable of his mother.
And the opera turns to his disadvantage and to our merry pleasure since he is a fool in the first act, a fair idiot in the second act and then he disappears to come back a transformed person who has discovered there are many other things in life beyond his mother and her narrow-minded vision of her living death and her cane if not cudgel imposed authority. Good riddance and welcome home, finally home, your home, the way you make it and not the way your widowed mother wants to impose it.
The text is light and light-hearted, and yet it makes fun of British fundamentalism based on “no alcohol, we are teetotalers” and “no **fleshy contact**, we are British” and “no free thinking or atheistic illusions, we are Anglicans.” How could that fundamentalism survive in Great Britain so long with pub opening hours reduced to nearly nothing up to the 1980s when they were finally slightly extended and liberalized though they will be really free only in the 21sy century.
What is amazing is that two of the basic themes of Benjamin Britten’s operas are already all contained in this early one. Albert Herring is a stranger in his own village, kept apart, on the side and the target of jokes, tricks, and other pranks, like making him drink rum laced in his lemonade, or stealing his apples, or getting herbs for free by just forgetting to pay before leaving. He is also a stranger to his mother because she does not know he is a man and she treats him as if he were a pet, a working pet mind you, hence a domestic animal like an ox, and he is as strong as one if not two.
The second theme is of course the denunciation of ethical, religious, moral fundamentalism and particularly the way some women who think they are the mothers of society like Lady Billows, not one billow but several large undulating mass of something, typically cloud, smoke, or steam, or maybe a vast inflated balloon billowing in the hot air of her moralistic discourse, fanned like a moralistic fire by the local Mayor, the local Vicar and the local Superintendent, or is it only a simple Constable? Three men aided by a fourth female character, the local teacher, Miss Wordsworth who is worth what words are worth, not much indeed since they only exist in dictionaries. And of course a real mother, the possessive control freak that she is, is seen as stifling, choking and smothering her own son into asocial suffocation with only one intention: to make him a money-earner for the family, that is to say for herself.
These two themes are extremely present in many operas with one absent here: the killing or abducting father figure, the third side of the trinity Benjamin Britten used so much all the time along with pentacles and pentads like the five selectors of the new May King: Lady Billows, Mr. Gedge the Vicar, Superintendent Budd, Mr. Upfold the Mayor and Miss Wordsworth the Head Teacher, clearly opposed to the three people around Albert, Sid, Nancy and Mrs. Herring, and the three kids from the village, Emmie, Cis and Harry. And if you add Florence Pike, the Housekeeper of the Lady, you reach thirteen fateful blind deaf and not dumb at all, meaning mute, though quite dumb meaning besotted characters. And their names are just a bunch of funny puns.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Just out of World War Two, let us sing the greatness of Great Britain and the still in existence Empire. The greatness and also the naïve innocence of the old Celtic traditions of the Maypole, May Day and of course May Queen. But today it is difficult to find a pure, innocent, virginal female teenager who could qualify for such a rite, such a choice, such a symbolic designation. So the poor villagers and their local noble lady are obliged to change their target and aim at a May King. And sure enough there is one who qualifies, though we do not know why that actually happened.
This Albert Herring, with no father any more and only a possessive control freak mother is the next greengrocer of the village when his mother decides to retire. More than a simpleton, since he knows how to count and he’d better do so since everyone is trying to cheat him out of what they owe him, he is nicely autistic more than anything else: he has difficulties establishing a relation with any third person apart from himself and his mother. He is shy they say. He is hard working and one-pointed but he does not have any vision of the future: He lacks ambition – maybe – they say. And he does not know at all what is beyond the narrow pale of his mother: he has never had any alcohol since his mother is a teetotaler. He has never gone out to a pub or anywhere else since he works for his mother from sunrise to beyond sunset. He has never approached or been approached by a girl or woman since he is the untouchable of his mother.
And the opera turns to his disadvantage and to our merry pleasure since he is a fool in the first act, a fair idiot in the second act and then he disappears to come back a transformed person who has discovered there are many other things in life beyond his mother and her narrow-minded vision of her living death and her cane if not cudgel imposed authority. Good riddance and welcome home, finally home, your home, the way you make it and not the way your widowed mother wants to impose it.
The text is light and light-hearted, and yet it makes fun of British fundamentalism based on “no alcohol, we are teetotalers” and “no **fleshy contact**, we are British” and “no free thinking or atheistic illusions, we are Anglicans.” How could that fundamentalism survive in Great Britain so long with pub opening hours reduced to nearly nothing up to the 1980s when they were finally slightly extended and liberalized though they will be really free only in the 21sy century.
What is amazing is that two of the basic themes of Benjamin Britten’s operas are already all contained in this early one. Albert Herring is a stranger in his own village, kept apart, on the side and the target of jokes, tricks, and other pranks, like making him drink rum laced in his lemonade, or stealing his apples, or getting herbs for free by just forgetting to pay before leaving. He is also a stranger to his mother because she does not know he is a man and she treats him as if he were a pet, a working pet mind you, hence a domestic animal like an ox, and he is as strong as one if not two.
The second theme is of course the denunciation of ethical, religious, moral fundamentalism and particularly the way some women who think they are the mothers of society like Lady Billows, not one billow but several large undulating mass of something, typically cloud, smoke, or steam, or maybe a vast inflated balloon billowing in the hot air of her moralistic discourse, fanned like a moralistic fire by the local Mayor, the local Vicar and the local Superintendent, or is it only a simple Constable? Three men aided by a fourth female character, the local teacher, Miss Wordsworth who is worth what words are worth, not much indeed since they only exist in dictionaries. And of course a real mother, the possessive control freak that she is, is seen as stifling, choking and smothering her own son into asocial suffocation with only one intention: to make him a money-earner for the family, that is to say for herself.
These two themes are extremely present in many operas with one absent here: the killing or abducting father figure, the third side of the trinity Benjamin Britten used so much all the time along with pentacles and pentads like the five selectors of the new May King: Lady Billows, Mr. Gedge the Vicar, Superintendent Budd, Mr. Upfold the Mayor and Miss Wordsworth the Head Teacher, clearly opposed to the three people around Albert, Sid, Nancy and Mrs. Herring, and the three kids from the village, Emmie, Cis and Harry. And if you add Florence Pike, the Housekeeper of the Lady, you reach thirteen fateful blind deaf and not dumb at all, meaning mute, though quite dumb meaning besotted characters. And their names are just a bunch of funny puns.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews