Albert Herring – review

Would Albert Herring be any Britten fan's desert-island opera? It seemed a lightweight choice in some ways for the close of the BBCSO's Britten centenary celebrations: his gently acerbic Suffolk-village comedy may show an extremely skilful opera composer happily at work, but his most characteristic, heart-stopping music is to be found elsewhere. Still, celebration was in order, a strong cast had been put together, and a receptive audience lapped this performance up.

With the 13-player orchestra on stage, the focus was more than usually on the instrumental music. The players did it handsome justice under Steuart Bedford, whose affinity with his former mentor's music was obvious in his perfectly judged pacing.

The action, directed observantly by Kenneth Richardson, took place on either side, with Albert's greengrocer's shop accessed through a wobbly doorframe. There were a handful of props – mainly vegetables – but the budget seemed to have run out before it came to costumes, which was unusually jarring. Albert Herring was an exercise in nostalgia even in 1947; with all its talk of gas lighting and of "25 quid" as an enviable amount of prize money, its period detail is relentless. How could Lady Billows pontificate about girls flashing their ankles while so proudly flaunting her own?

Lady B often dominates in this work, but while Christine Brewer always gives good battleaxe, her high notes were harsh, her bearing more eccentric than aristocratic. Instead, Roderick Williams made an effortless scene-stealer of Mr Gedge, the vicar. Matthew Rose, Gillian Keith and Adrian Thompson, as the other village do-gooders, were only just behind him, and it seemed likely that Kitty Whately's classy, rich-toned Nancy would soon find someone more magnetic than Marcus Farnsworth's decent but ordinary Sid. In the centre of it all, Andrew Staples's singing of Albert combined chorister clarity with a youthfully fresh-sounding tenor, and we rooted for him all the way.