It was Britten’s anniversary weekend and the BBC did him proud, not least with this live relay of Albert Herring. Even so, he shared the limelight with bicentenarians Verdi and Wagner, the first parodied with celestial woodwind as Albert’s virtues are lauded, the second quoted repeatedly with the Tristan chord to denote the young man’s moral decline, as the village community see it.
But the score is vintage Britten and it was delivered with lucidity by a chamber ensemble from the BBC Symphony Orchestra placed centre stage, Steuart Bedford conducting admirably from the piano.
The action — this was not so much a semi-staging as a three-quarter one and imaginatively handled too by Kenneth Richardson — unfolded around them. The characters were in modern dress — a trendy bejeaned vicar, for example — though the story doesn’t translate easily into contemporary terms. It’s difficult to imagine a 21st-century village community, even in East Suffolk, reacting with quite such horror to a young man’s night on the tiles.
Roderick Williams brought a sympathetic eloquence to the vicar’s role, though, while other cast members included Gillian Keith as Miss Wordsworth, Gaynor Keeble as Florence Pike, Matthew Rose as Superintendent Budd, and Adrian Thompson as the mayor. Andrew Staples in the title role won our approbation for his empowering act of rebellion, while Kitty Whately took advantage of the music given Nancy.
As Lady Billows, the preposterous autocratic busybody, Christine Brewer had licence to sound a bit squally, but these days, one fears, it’s not always affected.
