About the work
Comic chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by Eric Crozier, based on Guy de Maupassant's novella 'Le Rosier de Madame Husson'; first performed on 20 June 1947 at the Glyndebourne Festival Theatre. Crozier and Britten relocated the story from Normandy to the fictional Suffolk town of Loxford.
Plot
As none of the young women of Loxford is judged virtuous enough to be crowned May Queen, the town's dignitaries instead choose the shy greengrocer Albert Herring as 'May King'. At the celebration his drink is secretly spiked with rum; the drunken Albert leaves town for a night of adventure and returns the next morning a self-assured young man who resists the village elders' control.
Cultural significance
Britten wrote the work, his first full-length comic opera, as a light-hearted companion piece to his preceding tragedy 'The Rape of Lucretia', dedicating it to E. M. Forster. Glyndebourne's founder John Christie initially rejected the opera; pianist Sviatoslav Richter later called it one of the greatest comic operas of the twentieth century.