Music: Satire in Sussex

Operas were still rolling off English Composer Benjamin Britten’s promised one-a-year production line, but the new 1947 model seemed to have some rattles.

In the Glyndebourne Festival opera house, tucked away in England’s Sussex Downs, bright, young (33) Composer Britten’s third opera in as many years had its premiere last week. It was Britten’s first try at satirical comedy; his first two operas, Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia (TIME, June 9), were both dark and tragic. For the new opera, Albert Herring, Librettist Eric Crozier did a slapstick adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s cynical Le Rosier de Mme. Husson, in which an innocent village bumpkin goes off on a wild, sinful night after being chosen King of the May. Britten scored it for chamber orchestra in his familiar brittle, witty and forcefully dissonant style.

The audience seemed to like Albert Herring, and roared for the composer-conductor. But some critics found loose parts that they had not detected in earlier models. Said the London Times: “Mr. Britten is still pursuing his old problem of seeing how much indigestible material he can dissolve in music.” Added another critic: “. . . There are certain pages . . . that seem to betray hasty composition.”