English National Opera's fruity first at the Lowry

The first performance of a full work by English National Opera in its new “partnership” with Greater Manchester’s arts venues – announced last year – is Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring, the comical, everyday story of small-town folk with a central character who works in his mum’s greengrocer’s shop.

Albert Herring is based on a story by Guy de Maupassant and starts from a town dilemma over who should be crowned May Queen. The person has to be a pure, innocent girl and they can’t find one… so the choice falls on young, rather naive, Albert, who is made King of the May instead. But there’s more to Albert than meets the eye…

The small-scale opera, originally scored for a troupe that toured it and Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia with a 13-piece orchestra and no chorus, will be in a semi-staged version, first at the London Coliseum on October 13 & 16, then at Salford's Lowry on October 21 & 22 (the latter a matinee).

Sir Willard White

Caspar Singh

It’s the first time ENO has ever produced Albert Herring, though it has staged most of the rest of the Britten canon - not surprising given the vast size of the Coliseum, its only home hitherto. If there’s one thing that this piece needs, it’s a bit of intimacy.

But ENO is filling a small gap in Opera North’s provision in the North West with the work, as the Leeds-based company - which has regularly put it on in the past - last presented it in a production for larger theatres in 2002, and has since 2013 used a production designed for the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds, in which you are so close to the action you can smell the fruit in the shop (it was performed there, very successfully, last year).

ENO has a clutch of notable names in its cast, including the highly regarded British-Indian tenor Caspar Singh (above right) – heard in the recent First Night of the Proms – in the title role, and the veteran Sir Willard White (above right) as Superintendent Budd, the town’s police chief. Lady Billows, the grande dame of the community of Loxford, will be sung by Emma Bell, and her

housekeeper Florence Pike by Carolyn Dobbin. Leah-Marian Jones is Albert’s mum, Mark

Le Brocq plays Mr Upfold the mayor, and Aoife Miskelly is Miss Wordsworth the school teacher. Anna Elizabeth Cooper and Dan D’Souza are Nancy and Sid, the feisty young lovers of the story. The director and designer is Antony McDonald, and Daniel Cohen conducts.

More info and tickets here