Fresh as an April shower: Opera North’s Albert Herring reviewed

Opera North has launched its spring season with Giles Havergal’s 2013 production of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring, performed (as conceived) in the Howard Assembly Room – the company’s studio space next door to the Grand Theatre. The economics of opera are a dark and dismal science, but one of the few constants is that ticket sales are never the whole story. So if ON has revived a show that can only accommodate an audience of around 300, and which can’t tour, we should assume that’s all priced in. The problem here is that Havergal presents the opera in the round, a practice rarely seen on the unsubsidised stage but beloved by directors who don’t have to worry too much about the paying public.

With seating on three sides of the performance space, the result, as always, is that there are stretches where at least some of the audience can’t see the performers’ faces, or hear what they’re saying.