When I think opera, I think high drama, deaths that last several minutes (if not hours), murder and mayhem chock-full of bravado, all carried off by people who were born to perform. I think German gluttony and Italian fury. I do not think British anything. So the thought of seeing Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring, an opera composed in and based on the lifestyle of mid-century England, didn't immediately fill me with excitement. Even though it is touted in the program as "arguably the most loved of all Britten's operas," this still wasn't enough to convince me to embrace it with open arms. In my opinion, to talk about one of Britain's best operas is a little like trying to promote Sweden's best basketball player-something doesn't quite wash. Yet despite my initial reservations, The Yale Opera's production of this Britten smash is sweet, likeable, and, at its most finely tuned moments, infectiously delightful.
The Yale Opera is affiliated with the Yale School of Music, and all the singers are current students. Visiting director Colin Graham creates a world where nothing is taken so seriously that it can't be stirred and soothed with the power of a good set of lungs. The set, designed by Paul Shortt, adds to the general air of frivolity, with lots of softly-hued pastels and carefully selected foliage. (I was a little disappointed, however, that the May Day festivities didn't involve a real May Pole). Everything comes together to create the air that we are here, first and foremost, to have fun.
The plot of this opera is, as opera plots go, cute at best. The whole town, under the head of the imperial Lady Billows, played by Lori Trustman, MUS '97, is trying to find a May Queen for Mayday. This May Queen must be, to put it tactfully, a virgo intacta, yet such a quality is severely wanting in the young women of this town, as "virgins if there be such think too little and see too much." Instead, a May King is found-Albert, played by Chad Shelton, MUS '96, a chaste, soft, ineffectual young man who is currently bemoaning the virtues that won him this dubious honor. He wants to live his own life, and with a little help from the magic of liquor, he goes off to discover himself and become a virgo intacta no longer.
I don't wish to knock a story where becoming tipsy is the key to solving all of one's problems (we are college students, after all), yet I missed some of the passion and deep human pathos which drives other operas. For instance, the sexual tension between two of the characters is established in a scene where one of the woman's most potent lines is "I've come for a piece of bestŠEnglishŠbeef." Not quite the stuff of the world's greatest love affairs.
Also, because there is no grand event which takes place (it's only a sip of rum, for God's sake), for the climax Albert instead is conveniently removed between acts two and three so the other characters can think he's dead and immediately launch into an ensemble number entitled "In the midst of life is death."
True, his mother gets to wrench her guts out and we get to hear stirring, thought-provoking lines like "a grave's a fine and private place but horribly cold," but it's ultimately a ridiculous plot device which doesn't even begin to fit with the world Britten has thus far established. I didn't get the sense from a single actor on stage that they hadn't all read the program notes just like me and weren't well clued in that Albert's reappearance was only a few scenes away.
The actors who are most effective in their roles are the ones who seem to be having the most fun on stage. Sid, another town friend of Albert's played by Robert Gardner, creates mischief vocally and physically with dash and aplomb. Albert's mother, played by Monica Bellner, MUS '97, is the only one who rides the full emotion of her character; every comment she makes is taken right to the heart. Miss Wordsworth, played by Heather Buck, MUS '96, has a perkiness and unflappability that grows on you. Albert himself is wonderful, so fluidly performed and sung that I too wanted to knock back a few and get to know my real self.
The staging allows the characters to sweep and parade around the space with utmost ease; the only times it felt burdensome was the choice to get over the two larger, non-active lumps by placing them around a table. This could have been made up for if these times had been used to showcase the singing talent; unfortunately, none of the actors has yet reached the point in their training where they can really vocally command a space as large as the Shubert with only a few floor mikes several feet away. The last opera I saw circumvented this problem by miking each individual singer, a slight cheat which worked, but probably would have marred the visuality of this production.
I still am hesitant about the idea of British opera. There is something irrevocably unsettling about this juxtaposition. However, it's certainly not a prejudice I hold too close to my heart, and I was more than willing to have the Yale Opera challenge and disprove some of my less than virtuous beliefs.
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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