(no subject)
There's an interesting and heartening little item in this week's Sunday Times. It reminded me of something I wrote about in my journal four years ago, when I gave a short review of Benjamin Britten's opera Albert Herring after seeing a performance of it by Opera North. Here's part of what I wrote then.
Albert Herring is an interesting opera by Benjamin Britten. At one level, it is a comedy about English social attitudes, set in the deeply conservative rural community of Loxford, where they are unable to find a suitable May Queen for the May Day ceremonies. Eventually they hit on the idea of choosing instead a May King, the greengrocer's assistant Albert Herring. [...] Britten uses this scenario to explore issues of sexual identity and gender transgression.
But now it seems that fact has caught up with fiction. Here's what the Sunday Times reports. (Considering that both it and The Sun are Rupert Murdoch papers with a strong conservative bias, and that it's writing about a small town in rural England, I think it's very encouraging that social attitudes have become so accepting and relaxed. It's a far cry from the hysterical intolerance of Margaret Thatcher's time only 20 years ago.)
Only gay in the village of the week
A gay teenager has been chosen as carnival queen by a small Somerset town. David Bridge, 15, will parade through the streets of Axbridge wearing a dress, tiara and high heels. He auditioned in front of the mayor, who didn't have the heart to turn him down, reported The Sun. "It seemed fun and I thought I'd enjoy dressing up," said David, pictured right. Just four people applied to head the parade, so mayor Barry Hamblin named two previous queens as princesses, picked a 16-year-old girl as queen with David as "alternative queen". Said one member of the selection committee: "It's hard enough to get people involved as it is."