Albert Herring

Act I

In her grand home in the small East Suffolk town of Loxford, the elderly autocrat Lady Billows is running her servant, Florence Pike, ragged as usual. Florence diligently writes her mistress’s orders in her little notebook, but, stressed, she closes it suddenly in frustration. There is a knock on the door--Lady Billows has assembled a committee of all of the “important” people in the town, including the Vicar, Mr. Gedge; the school headmistress, Miss Wordsworth; Police Superintendent Budd, and Mayor Upfold. While they wait for Lady Billows, they discuss the declining moral standards among the town’s young people. Her Ladyship makes her grand entrance and sets to the matter of the day--discussing which of the town’s young girls will be selected as the Queen of the May at the upcoming May Day Feast. The committee lists possible names, but Florence has dug up dirt on every single girl that shows her character to be less than the perfect Victorian ideal that Lady Billows is