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Published on 8/28/08
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Since 2000, Neal Goren's Gotham Chamber Opera has added variety and a hip glamour to New York's opera scene. The Harry de Jur Playhouse, a beautifully restored, intimate 1915 gem, hosts the troupe's artful, sometimes provocative mountings of neglected smaller pieces. Gotham's latest venture is a five-performance run of one of Benjamin Britten's trickier works, Albert Herring, a 1947 character comedy complete with vicar and spiked lemonade.
Goren offers not only impressively wide-ranging podium skills, but also a flair for assembling hot creative teams. Costumed by David Zinn, the cast will inhabit a set by Riccardo Hernandez lit by Scott Zielinski. The singers include rising stars—tenor Matt Morgan as the naïve Albert, unwillingly chosen as his village's May King, and City Opera's promising Leah Wool and Timothy Kuhn as his more sexually knowing friends—and internationally established artists. Verdian stalwart Barbara Dever portrays the mum who keeps Albert under her thumb; soprano Karen Huffstodt, whose résumé stretches from Violetta to Isolde, returns to New York in the fiercely demanding role of local grande dame Lady Billows.
Sought-after director David Schweizer has relocated Britten's comedy to the early '50s. "Britten set it 50 years before him, in Edwardian times," Schweizer explained in a telephone interview. "Going for a similar time colored by nostalgia and repression, we didn't have to change a word to release the headlong excitement underlying the staging." That notion, combined with Goren's advocacy, should make this little-known work a vital, vibrant experience.—David Shengold
