Now here’s a howdy-do! The May Day festival in the backwater market town of Loxford is coming up and none of the loose local lasses is deemed worthy to reign as the virginal May Queen. Okay, how about a May King in the person of Albert Herring, the hen-pecked mama’s-boy bumpkin who works at the grocery store? What could possibly go wrong? Spoiler alert: you name it. As the follow-up to Benjamin Britten’s steely Rape of Lucretia, this frothy bauble was not to the liking of John Christie, the owner and founder of Glyndebourne, where it had its premiere in 1947. “This isn’t our kind of thing, you know,” he advised patrons as they made their way to their seats. Yet the piece has worn remarkably well, and in the tenor Miles Mykkanen, Chicago Opera Theater has the sort of bouncy, fresh-faced boy next door who can make it sing. —Matthew Gurewitsch