Westminster Opera Theater to Present Britten’s Albert Herring

Westminster Opera Theater will present Albert Herring by Benjamin Britten, Thursday, November 3 thru Saturday, November 5 at 8 p.m., as well as a matinee performance on Sunday, November 6 at 3 p.m.  All performances will take place in The Playhouse on the campus of Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton.  Admission for this performance is $20 for adults and $15 for students and seniors.  Tickets can be purchased by calling the Westminster box office weekdays at 609-921-2663 between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. or at the door. 

Set in the spring of 1900 in the village of Loxford, this satirical comic opera fires barbs at the hypocrisy, pomposity and small town parochialism inhabitants.  Unable to select a May Queen because of the suspect credentials of the local girls, the selection committee is forced to abandon tradition and elect a ‘King’ of the May. This questionable honor falls to the meek and unassuming Albert Herring.  Assisted by his friend Sid – or more precisely, Sid’s infusion of rum into the ‘King’s’ lemonade – Albert gains the courage to break free of the constraints placed upon him by his domineering mother and the town busybodies, presumably no longer fulfilling the selection committee’s exacting moral standards.

Bill Fabris is stage director, and Larry Devlin is music director for this production.  The cast is composed of Westminster students, from both the undergraduate and graduate programs. 

Westminster Opera Theater has been praised for its innovative productions of a wide range of operas.  Participants in the program have gone on to perform in major opera houses around the world.  They include Jennifer Larmore and Emily Magee, who perform regularly with the world’s greatest opera companies.  Graduates of the program have been the grand prizewinners in three of the past 12 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

A regular with Chautauqua Opera, Bill Fabris has directed H.M.S. Pinafore, The Barber of Seville and The Mikado, as well as several musical reviews for the Young Artist Program.  Equally at home in the worlds of opera and musical theater, Mr. Fabris has been directing musicals for the past several years at the Ash Lawn-Highland Summer Festival.  Recent productions include Fiddler On The Roof, Oklahoma!, The Wizard of Oz and Kiss Me, Kate.

Mr. Fabris’ work regularly appears on the stages of regional opera companies, including Opera Delaware, Mobile Opera, Opera Colorado Artist Center, Eugene Opera, South Carolina Opera, Opera Pacific, Natchez Opera, Lyric Opera of San Antonio and Opera Boston.

His New York credits include The Desert Song, The Merry Widow and Countess Maritza for the Village Light Opera Group.  Since 1987, Mr. Fabris has been director and choreographer for the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players.  Highlights of his work include the recent productions of The Pirates of Penzance and H.M.S. Pinafore at City Center.  Off-Broadway, he directed and choreographed the 20th-anniversary production of Boy Meets Boy.

Internationally, Bill Fabris directed A Little Sondheim Music and The Music of Leonard Bernstein at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain.  He directed the European tours of Jesus Christ Superstar and Hair, and choreographed the award-winning short film Boot Camp, which was featured at Sundance.

Mr. Fabris is on the faculty of Westminster Choir College of Rider University, where he teaches music theater, dance, and directs the Westminster Opera Theater.

Mr. Devlin has worked as conductor, assistant conductor, pianist or coach on over 35 operas for The Baltimore Opera Studio of the Baltimore Opera, New Jersey State Opera, OperaDelaware, The Monadnock Music Festival, Peabody Opera Theater, and Temple Opera Theater.  Most recently, he cover-conducted Albert Herring at Temple University.  In 1991 Mr. Devlin served as the music director of the Baltimore Opera Theater, the young artist program of the Baltimore Opera.  While there, he oversaw the musical development of six singers, conducted Così fan tutte and was music director for Giannini’s Beauty and the Beast. 

For the five years, Mr. Devlin served on the faculty of the Esther Boyer College of Music at Temple University and as orchestral pianist and keyboardist for the Delaware Symphony.  He also coached singers, taught foreign language diction, and was cover conductor for the opera.