ENO first crack at Albert Herring comes to Lowry
- Robert Beale
- Oct 14
- 2 min read
English National Opera’s first opera production to be brought to Lowry in Salford, a semi-staged version of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring, arrives next week (October 21 & 22).
The performance will be the first time in its history that ENO has presented Albert Herring, the show directed and designed by Manchester-trained Antony McDonald.
“I studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, essentially training to be a drama teacher,” he recalls. “But that’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to direct.”
So he went to Manchester for a course run jointly by Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester School of Theatre: "They created this sort of student company, where we’d have classes in the morning, rehearsals in the afternoon and performances in the evening. Though I wanted to direct, we did everything – acting, stage management, design, the lot. Julie Walters was there, and the writer Peter Flannery, and the director Tim Albery.”
Thinking of his approach to Albert Herring, a comic, everyday story of small-town folk with a central character who works in his mum’s greengrocer’s shop, he says: “Though it’s a comedy, I don’t think you can direct it in a funny way. You have to take it very seriously and prepare it really well, and hope the writing and music will take care of itself and make it funny.
“But to me, Albert Herring has a darker side. It’s like a softer version of Peter Grimes, dealing with the same idea of someone who’s an outsider, in a very judgmental society. Like all Britten opera, it’s a very personal piece. I think there are elements of him in all of the characters.
“We’re not doing this in an Edwardian style, with glamorous frocks, big hats and a marquee. It’s more pared back: a simplified set that I hope reveals this work has something more going on. I am trying to investigate what I see as the hypocrisy of those judgemental characters; I’m trying to make them as complicated and complex as possible. They’ve all got dark secrets to hide.”
Albert Herring is based on a story by Guy de Maupassant and starts from a small-town dilemma who should be crowned May Queen. The person should be a pure, innocent girl and they can’t find one… so the choice falls on young, rather naïve Albert, who is made King of the May instead. But there’s more to Albert than meets the eye…
Leeds-based Opera North has regularly put it on in the past, but last gave it a production for larger theatres in 2002, and since 2013 has used one designed for the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds only - in which you are so close to the action you can smell the fruit in the greengrocery; the work was performed there, very successfully, last year.
More info and tickets here
