Britten - Owen Wingrave (Manchester, 2025)

Benjamin Britten - Owen Wingrave

Royal Northern College of Music, 2025

Rory Macdonald, Benjamin Voce, Orpha Phelan, Alex Riddell, Johannes Gerges, Sam Rose, Kirsty McNaughton, Esther Shea, Hannah Andrusier, Daisy Mitchell, Samuel Horton, Grant Haddow

RMCM Theatre, Manchester - 5th April 2025

The cause of going to war has remained a moral dilemma throughout the ages, and those conscientious objectors and pacifists opposed to it have very much been against the tide of history. Even the most devout Christian leaders seem to be permitted special dispensation to get around the very unambiguous commandment "Thou shall not kill" when it comes to war. Perhaps the real problem that hasn't been addressed is that human nature doesn't seem to have yet found a way to overcome its taste for greed and barbarism. Quite the contrary. To present oneself as a nonconformist to the prevailing order of things as Owen Wingrave does and as Benjamin Britten did in his time, one needs a strong counterargument and Henry James' original story presents the case where it's not enough to just be against something, but rather to take positive steps and stand up for one's beliefs from a position of strength even when they are rejected by everyone else.

That's perhaps getting a little preachy, but it's necessary to emphasise how much the arguments in Owen Wingrave and in Britten's impassioned opera version are just as important now as they were at the end of the 19th century when James read uncomprehendingly of the glorification of Napoleon's campaigns, and during the war years of the 1930s and 40s when Britten took a principled stand as a conscientious objector. It also serves as a reminder that, over a decade on from the composer's anniversary celebrations and now less frequently performed (The Turn of the Screw aside), Britten's music still has a lot to offer and hopefully isn't going out of fashion. Written for musicians and audiences of all ages - Owen Wingrave even originating as a TV opera - makes his work suitable for smaller scale productions, while still having all the impact of a full-scale opera production. That's essentially what we got at with this Owen Wingrave at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

Having thoroughly considered the reasons for his decision to withdraw from military academy, Owen Wingrave's initial arguments and explanations, his genuine distaste for what it represents come from the heart and get directly to the essence of his dilemma. He is unable to see any case for the glorification of death, violence and the misery that war brings. Wingrave, despite a long proud family tradition (of being killed in battle), refuses to take part in such horror, much to the shock, disbelief and disapproval of his family and friends. He names and shames all the wartime leaders/mass murderers of history and even when challenged on that by his tutor Coyle and fellow student Lechmere to dare level his argument against a great man like Wellington, recalls the Duke's famous quote that "Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won". The counter-argument presented by Coyle and Lechmere is that Wellington still fought his battles and won them. 

The sincerity of the sentiment and the intellectual argument are one thing - and would probably not make all that compelling a subject for an opera - but making it feel like a matter of real life and death is another. Although it wasn't his usual genre, The Turn of the Screw notwithstanding (also developed as an opera by Britten of course), Henry James found the ghost story an effective means for tapping into areas of the human psyche as a way of exposing or suggesting unspoken and taboo subjects. Britten also rose to that challenge in the writing of Owen Wingrave, commissioned in 1971 for a TV broadcast, and while the opera does inevitably have its moments of preachiness, it also finds ways musically to persuade and frighten in order to get beneath the skin. The director of this production, Orpha Phelan, also finds ways to make that come alive in mood, content and situation, and so too do the music students at RNCM.

The essential character of making this a pertinent subject today is evidently to make it feel present, not some dusty period drama or ghost story. That is clearly the intention right from the start of this production, using the overture or introduction to show soldiers from a number of historical periods climbing onto the stage, seeking cover and fighting for their lives. These are the Spirits of Paramour, the generations of Wingrave men who have given their lives for their country. These physical figures present a more effective ghostly presence than mere portraits of military ancestry hanging on the ancestral walls of the family estate for glorification. Phelan even provides a little tableau to illustrate the 'glorious' fate of Owen's father that is all the more effective for making it feel real. The talk of honour, sacrifice, duty and glory in war is just a twisting of language, but such devices show how Owen sees through this. His intent is to take back or reclaim the language of honour and decency for those who choose not to kill others or submit to blind obedience.

The military tradition of the Wingrave males present one kind of presence of horror, but there is another ghost story introduced that ties into the family's own mythology, another form of self-aggrandisement that in reality hides an uncomfortable truth. Whether taken literally or not (it's a problematic layer at least that has to be dealt with by a director), the childish dare to stay in a haunted room does contribute to the sense of unease in the breaking of taboos, in how far Owen is willing to go to show the depth and sincerity of his beliefs, and his fate is the price to be paid for it. Phelan again makes good choices in how she presents those elements, not playing up to genre trappings, but showing that there is a dark horrible story here, one of bullying and abuse, one that we may take to apply to the techniques employed on young recruits to become unthinking killers and grist for the mill. 

The set and the production design by Madeleine Boyd (who previously worked with Phelan on the Wexford Festival Opera's excellent production of Donizetti's Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali last year, certainly works very much along with the tone of Phelan's direction and contributes considerably to the mood. The choice is not to set it in the present day (where the horror of modern warfare seems even more depersonalised with drones and long-range missiles), but closer to Britten's wartime period. That, the First World War and the Napoleonic era referenced here, would still be the kind of warfare that an audience would be most familiar with as a killing ground. Somehow, even the Paramour setting has a similar feel of something mired in the past, like its hidebound intransigence in regard to the military establishment, a former glory that has not survived the rigours of the passage of time.

For the April 5th performance of Owen Wingrave at the RNCM, Alex Riddell gave a controlled, assured and impassioned performance as Owen, never descending to over earnestness or over-emphasis, but rather delivering with conviction and completely in line with the nature of the character. He is determined and assured, but also regretful of how his commitment to his own beliefs will be taken by his family. Riddell held the attention completely and conveyed the meaning of what is sung through a commanding performance. 

Kirsty McNaughton was a striking Miss Wingrave, as was Hannah Andrusier's Mrs Julian. Aside from the title character, few other roles have any sympathetic qualities in this opera, but it's important that the opposition that Owen faces has sufficient expression and voice, and that was abundantly delivered by McNaughton and Andrusier. Serving an equally important role as Owen's fiancée, Daisy Mitchell performance was very much up to the task of the berating and bullying Kate. Mrs Coyle has more of a conflicted position, but was sung well by Esther Shea.

In comparison to the forceful writing of the female roles, the military men come across as rather weak and pathetic, but were characterised and sung well by Johannes Gerges as Coyle and Sam Rose as the young, enthusiastic and approval-seeking Lechmere. Grant Haddow gave a perfect delivery of the ghost story as the ballad singer at the opening of the second act, setting up Samuel Horton to present the formidable Sir Philip Wingrave as the author or instigator of Owen's demise.

Britten's score was presented in a reduced orchestration at this RNCM production, but I have to say that the musical performance never felt like it. Rory Macdonald's musical direction, with the orchestra here playing under assistant conductor Benjamin Voce, had all the necessary mood and impact. And not just the music nor indeed the uniformly fine singing performances, but everything about this production contributed to the mood and direction of the piece and the most effective way of delivering the important message of the opera. Even the offstage chorus sounded perfect as the Spirits of Paramore. This was pretty much an ideal production of Owen Wingrave whichever way you look at it.

External links: Royal Northern College of Music

Britten - The Turn of the Screw (Brussels, 2021)

Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw (Brussels, 2021)

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2021

Ben Glassberg, Andrea Breth, Ed Lyon, Sally Matthews, Henri de Beauffort, Katharina Bierweiler, Carole Wilson, Julian Hubbard, Giselle Allen

La Monnaie Streaming/Opera Vision, April 2021

Britten's chamber opera The Turn of the Screw perfectly captures the mood and character of the chillingly sinister original Henry James story, but just as importantly it captures much of the psychological mystery and ambiguity within the ghostly tale. A director can enhance or emphasise certain elements of that ambiguity, but it shouldn't reveal too much. Britten's perfect score and the wonderful writing for the voice are more than enough to bring out the deeper character and suggestion that lies within it. 

Andrea Breth does that quite well in the 2021 La Monnaie production, placing the emphasis more on the expression of the horror deriving from the inner delusions of the impressionable governess, but it's not without suggesting that there is indeed something to her fears. The opera certainly hints at dark events, at the loss of childhood innocence and the corrupting influence of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel and the harmful legacy they have left over the children.

The first thing that strikes you in the opening scene of this production - as it perhaps should more than any obvious input or emphasis of the director - is the effect of the music and the mood it creates right from the outset. That has as much to do with Britten's score as with the meticulous performance of the La Monnaie orchestra under Ben Glassberg and by the singing of Sally Matthews as the Governess and Ed Lyon as the narrator. Both demonstrate a gorgeous tone with beautiful enunciation, but also delivering the content of the libretto with suggestion of the horror to unfold.

In setting, lighting and colouration, it's doesn't vary too much from convention and expectations, looking very much like every production of The Turn of the Screw looks. Dark, monochrome and austere, with cool lighting and plenty of shadow, but here director Andrea Breth allows several other spectral figures to appear on the stage. Even in the opening scene, Miss Jessel and a particularly demented looking Peter Quint already make an appearance, moving in and even taking over some of the narrator and the Governess's vocal lines, their influence over the whole tone of the work and what goes on in Bly already made evident.

It's also evident that Breth intends to extend that mood out and make visible some of the more hidden and suggestive undercurrents. Rather like the 2012-2016 Northern Ireland Opera production - back when we were fortunate to have an adventurous and ambitious artistic director of opera in Oliver Mears - this production uses panels, sliding doors and hidden rooms to open up the dark recesses of Bly or the Governess - take your pick: it's open for interpretation who is driving the psychosis that is rapidly escalating, or tightening like the turn of a screw.

It comes from a place "where things unspoken of can be', and Raimund Orfeo Voigt's sets shows the unspoken lying in wait everywhere to entrap. You can never remove the undercurrents of sexual repression of the Governess running up against the suggestion of sexual abuse of the children or some dark influence that they have been subjected to at the hands of Quint and Jessel, there is less of that made explicit in this production of the work. It's certainly hinted at, but if the emphasis in this production is principally within the mind of Governess, we can see that she doesn't have sufficient knowledge of such evil to imagine it playing out.

In some ways I even wonder if there is an angle there to be explored in The Turn of the Screw, and whether it is also important to retain adherence to the period in order to bring it out. There does seem to be a generational conflict in the changing times and attitudes, the older generation fearing the new, seeing it as decadent and corrupt, overturning traditional values. The Governess seems to be in-between, not comfortable with the past or the present, fearing for what lies ahead for the future generation. The loss of innocence that may already have happened and she feels powerless to intervene, or it may indeed be her misguided attempts at over-protectiveness that result in the tragic conclusion.

On a more general note, one of the policies I like about La Monnaie - aside from their adventurous programming and choice of directors - is how they retain a few strong performers on their books who are versatile and supremely capable in a number of varied roles and styles. Sally Matthews is just superb here as Governess, firm of voice, secure in range, but also capable of bringing real urgency and personality to a fairly complex character. Andrea Breth also fulfills perfectly the La Monnaie policy of modernising with purpose when it is appropriate to do so. Although this looks period in costume and set design - there are no mobile phones here - it uses modern techniques to extend the themes beyond the period, breaking down walls - quite literally - to work more closely with the music, not just the dramatic content of the libretto.

Musically too, the production is of an exceptionally high standard, as beautiful an account of this Britten work as you could hope for. Evidence of the quality of the performance is clear from the superb sound mixing that La Monnaie have captured for this streamed live recording. Every instrument can be heard, every little detail that adds to the character of the work, the voices rising clear above the orchestration with a natural theatrical sounding resonance. Aside from the already mentioned Ed Lyon and Sally Matthews then there is much to enjoy in the singing of Julian Hubbard as Quint and Giselle Allen - the quintessential Miss Jessel. Carole Wilson likewise is a fine Mrs Grose and there are good performances Henri de Beauffort and Katharina Bierweiler as Miles and Flora.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Britten - The Rape of Lucretia (Glasgow, 2020)

Benjamin Britten - The Rape of Lucretia

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, 2020

Lionel Friend, Jack Furness, Lauren Young, Jolyon Loy, MacArthur Alewel, Oskar McCarthy, Lea Shaw, Karina Bligh, Robin Horgan, Hasmik Harutyunyan

New Athenaeum Theatre, Glasgow - 20 January 2020

Aside from Aldeburgh of course, Britten seems to have all but vanished again from main repertory programming at opera houses, or at least his presence there seems to have returned again to not stretching much beyond the perennial hits The Turn of the Screw, Death in Venice and Peter Grimes. It's nice to be reminded then by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland that one of Britten's lesser performed works, the chamber opera The Rape of Lucretia still rates as one of his best and most interesting pieces.

It may have the reputation of being relatively minor, but there's much of interest in this Britten opera, not least its narrative division between the drama of the rape of Lucretia by the Roman prince Tarquinius and the two person male/female chorus who look on and provide commentary about what is going on. As far at the RCS production is concerned there's room and perhaps need for developing on this structure since its purpose is to provide a Christian outlook on pre-Christian attitudes towards women, war and violence. Clearly looking around at Christian nations today and their behaviour in those areas the idea that there is that much distance between them is certainly something that needs to be challenged.

As a committed pacifist and conscientious objector writing this work during the war, evidently that is a distinction and a discussion that Britten and his librettist Ronald Duncan intended to raise, but a production should always look for ways of bringing that message up to date and reflect the world around us. In matters of war, with the use of modern technology nations and armies are even capable of worse atrocities, taking torture, rape, genocide and destruction to a new and increasingly dehumanised level. The RCS production, as well as seeking to implicate the modern day soldiers in the rape of Lucretia, also seeks to simultaneously show the distancing of emotions where murder and massacre can take place at a physical and emotional distance, flying a drone or pressing a button.

The opening scene in Jack Furness's production finds a good way to highlight this, presenting a triage unit in a military hospital in a contemporary war zone. The army padre staff steps into a side cubicle with a female nurse and begins the story of Tarquinius and Lucretia. Gradually, the walls of the room - with the help of the padre - close in on the Roman story to the point that Lucretia is pressed into a narrow space. The idea of course to implicate the male and female chorus in what happens, but the RCS production takes it a little further than that, with the male chorus beginning to subject the nurse to the same sense of aggression, pride, entitlement, or whatever is that permits Tarquinius to press his attentions on Lucretia.

Just what it is exactly is the other interesting point in Britten's version of The Rape of Lucretia. I'm not sure that the RCS production illuminates that in any way, but it doesn't necessarily need to either. The actions, the war situation, the questions of violence in nature, in the male nature - in this case even a military priest - is unquestionably a factor in what occurs, and the essential point is that it occurs regardless of whether it's in pre-Christian times or in Christian nations. It's connected to the same urge that drives men and nations to go to war, and making you question this is more important than providing answers.

What is also vitally important in this opera is the musical performance. Britten's chamber operas are perfectly pared down, every instrument audible and contributing to the mood and meaning of the work. The thirteen musicians of the RCS orchestra conducted by Lionel Friend were simply superb, every exposed detail of the playing and interaction of the instruments perfectly audible in the New Athenaeum Theatre at the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow.

The singing was also perfect, soprano Lauren Young in particular outstanding as Lucretia. Robin Horgan's Male Chorus blessed with that perfect clear English diction and tenor voice so well suited to Britten, forming an intriguing and unsettling pairing in this production with Hasmik Harutyunyan's Female Chorus. There were lovely performances also from a soaring Karina Bligh and Lea Shaw as Lucretia's handmaidens Lucia and Bianca. The three Romans - Oskar McCarthy as Junius, Jolyon Loy as Tarquinius and MacArthur Alewel as Collatinus - all showed distinct qualities that matched Britten's requirements to highlight the characteristics of the three aggressive behaviour.

Links: Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Britten - Owen Wingrave (Dublin, 2017)

Benjamin Britten - Owen Wingrave

Opera Collective Ireland, 2017

Stephen Barlow, Tom Creed, Benjamin Russell, Christopher Cull, Peter O'Reilly, Roisín Walsh, Rachel Croash, Amy Ní Fherarraigh, Sarah Richmond, Andrew Boushell

O'Reilly Theatre, Dublin - 16th September 2017

Up until now Owen Wingrave has been the only Britten opera that I haven't had the opportunity to see or write about. And as good as this 2017 Opera Collective Ireland production was at the Dublin Fringe Festival - and there are certainly qualities to admire in the work - I think however I can see why it is so rarely performed. It's an opera with some very obvious flaws and certainly a lesser work by the composer.

I don't think however that anyone can question the sincerity of purpose of the opera, or Britten's fervent belief in and commitment to spreading the gospel of pacifism. Henry James's short story Owen Wingrave and the opportunity to present the work to a wider audience as a television opera might have seemed like a good vehicle to get that message across, but both seem to involve some measure of compromise with both the medium and the message.

Being written for TV presentation isn't necessarily the problem, since Britten had reservations about the new medium and strove to ensure that the opera was composed to also work as a stage drama, but there is still little of real dramatic interest in the piece. It might be a little reductive - which I think is also a fault with the opera - but essentially it seems to me to be about a young man from a family with a proud military history who says he's had enough of this war lark and doesn't want to train to be a soldier. The remainder of the opera is a series of condemnations and accusations of cowardice from his family and his fiancée's family who line up to take turns to castigate him for his decision.

There is also a ghost story element that is added to bring another dimension to the work and to show the difference between cowardice born out of fear and genuine conscientious objection to the horror of war. The supernatural element however is nowhere near as effective or of an essence to the piece as it is in Britten's other Henry James adaptation The Turn of the Screw, and it feels oddly out of place with the rather more serious intentions of the work.

Like the previous adaptation however, Britten does develop a distinctive, eerie and often challenging musical treatment for the work with greater emphasis here on percussion and use of the gamelan. Britten also makes an effort to introduce some arias and haunting 'Malo malo' moments, but the discoursive nature of the piece means that it is heavily reliant on preachy recitative. And posh preachy recitative at that, much too tied up in old family traditions and class concerns to really touch upon the essential matters at the heart of the subject.

The production design for the Opera Collective Ireland production directed by Tom Creed made some effort to update the work with references to Kandahar and the Falklands, as well as seeking to find some other ways to represent it visually, but none of them managed to enliven the work, make it any more engaging or even illustrate the at times difficult to make-out words of Myfanwy Piper's libretto. Instead of family portraits and a mansion we have a room filled with stuffed birds of prey and an isolating border wall. Projections also contribute to representational undercurrents of blind nationalism in an imposing Union Jack, and to the more sinister side of it in shadows of the hawks coming to life.

On the performance side, a good cast made the most of the roles and did their best to give them distinguishing characteristics and personality that is hard to find elsewhere in their almost unanimous condemnation of the reluctant soldier. Benjamin Russell's clear-voiced baritone was well suited to the role of Owen Wingrave and in how it blended in with Stephen Barlow's conducting of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, and Andrew Boushell's tenor soared as Sir Philip and the ballad singer. The stand-out performance however was Amy Ní Fherarraigh who cut through all the manners and mannerisms and gave us a steely, determined and frankly intimidating Mrs Julian. If only the horror of war and the supernatural elements had been depicted half as vividly as her Mrs Julian, the fate of Owen Wingrave would indeed have been something truly to fear.

Links: Opera Collective Ireland

Britten - Albert Herring (Buxton, 2017)

Benjamin Britten - Albert Herring

Buxton Festival, 2017

Justin Doyle, Francis Matthews, Bradley Smith, Heather Shipp, Morgan Pearse, Kathryn Rudge, John Molloy, Yvonne Howard, Nicholas Merryweather, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Lucy Schaufer, Mary Hegarty, Bonnie Callaghan, Nicholas Challier, Sophie Gallagher, Simeon John-Wake

Buxton Opera House - 19th July 2017

Who would have thought that Benjamin Britten, an outsider to the social and musical establishment, would be the composer who best captures the essential qualities of Englishness in his works? And not just in a kind of idealised fashion in the recounting of historical period drama or even just documenting the contemporary England of his times, but in a manner that captures attitudes and behaviours that are essentially and timelessly English. The social study of Peter Grimes might very well be his masterpiece in that regard, but Albert Herring captures much of the same character with the additional qualities of charm and humour.

It's the nature of the comedy and what is revealed through the brilliance of its wit and the wider detail of the characterisation that may even give weight to the argument for Albert Herring truly being Britten's masterpiece. Never having seen this Britten opera performed before (and not being English myself), I would have been sceptical of such a claim placing this work above Peter Grimes, Billy Budd or even War Requiem, but if there is a case to be made for Albert Herring as Britten's masterpiece, it's seeing it performed in Buxton surrounded by the same kind of characters that it depicts so colourfully up there on the stage. Francis Matthews's production for the 2017 Buxton Festival makes a wholly convincing case for its greatness.

Quite rightly, the principal claim for its greatness lies in the dazzling variety of the opera's musical language that never gets too clever for its own good. Britten develops and reworks musical, choral and motifs that don't just parody or emulate traditional English forms of music but tap into its baroque, folk and pastoral roots much more successfully than in Gloriana. It matches these moreover to specific English situations and character and to a lighter side of life that is loving and affectionate. You could say the same for how Justin Doyle brings those qualities out of the orchestral playing and for how Francis Matthews stages it in the marvellous Buxton production.

The other factor that stands in the favour of Albert Herring is the delightful witty libretto by Eric Crozier, based on a Maupassant story. Like Britten's score it is light and colourful, managing to be evocative of everything English without ever getting nostalgic or self-glorifying about it. How else can a line like 'Swan Vestas' be quite so hilarious? It celebrates the little person, the underdog and it deflates pomposity, finding the essence of Englishness out in its little village craftsmen and tradesmen rather than in the pretentiousness of its authority figures, although even there the work establishes a wonderful and authentic dynamic between its social classes. Even the name Albert Herring, with its regal forename matched to a rather more humble surname somehow manages to sum up everything that the work miraculously manages to achieve.

Surely then I wasn't the only person in the audience who looked on the behaviour around the May Day celebration committee table and thought of the cabinet of the current government? Theresa May, the authoritarian Lady Billings, with her delusions of competence, speaking in meaningless clichés and catch-phrases; Phillip Hammond the mayor managing the purse strings, but that official can manage to subtract 3 from 25 however, so there's a slight difference there; Michael Gove is Mr Gedge the Vicar, with his faith in educating the youth through the Bible, Shakespeare and Foxes Book of Martyrs. It's probably not fair to compare Sid to Boris Johnson, but still, quite the 'May Day' parade indeed.

Who am I kidding? I doubt anyone else would have been thinking such thoughts while enjoying how Francis Matthews directed the proceedings and the satire with a much lighter touch. Which is not to say that the Buxton audience weren't able to recognise and laugh at the gentle poking of fun at characters they would surely meet on a daily basis or at attitudes and behaviours which still persist. And to go by the current Conservative government whose actions are beyond satire really, it just goes to show how some characteristics are true and universal. And human. Which is what is great about Albert Herring and why it will endure.

The singing at Buxton really couldn't be faulted. Bradley Smith's brightly sung Albert is an innocent figure from a not so bygone age who needs to throw off that English reserve and stand up to his 'betters'. Sid and Nancy (now there's a prophetic pairing of names in respect of rebellious youth) are also wonderfully sung and characterised by Morgan Pearse and Kathryn Rudge. Heather Shipp is a fine Mrs Herring. The 'character' roles are an important part of the work and taken colourfully by Yvonne Howard as Lady Billows, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as Mr Upfold the Mayor, Nicholas Merryweather as Mr Gedge the Vicar and John Molloy as Superintendent Budd. With impeccable direction, light-hearted comic detail and visual jokes to go with the musical delights on offer, there was much to enjoy in this fabulously entertaining production of Britten's comic masterpiece.

Links: Buxton International Festival

Britten - The Turn of the Screw (NI Opera, 2016 - Belfast)

Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw

NI Opera, 2016

Nicholas Chalmers, Oliver Mears, Katie Bird, Garbhan McEnoy, Sam Furness, Giselle Allen, Yvonne Howard, Lucia Vernon-Long

Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 11 March 2016

There are many ways to explore and interpret the themes and the suggestion laid down by Benjamin Britten in his adaptation of Henry James' sinister little tale. Even in a revival of its 2012 production, NI Opera's The Turn of the Screw can reveal other facets of this endlessly fascinating little piece with a few changes of casting and a little tweak of directorial emphasis here and there. Essentially, the tone and the ambiguity of the production remain largely the same, but the whole idea of fear dominating the direction of the drama seemed to be more pronounced in a way that opened up other possibilities.

Fear, of course, is an integral part of what The Turn of the Screw is all about; it is a ghost story after all. It's perhaps not necessary though for the audience to feel fear in the way that a traditional ghost story sets out to do. That would actually be harder to achieve, since everyone has different things that scare them and evidently not everyone believes in ghosts. One of the other problems of this approach is that ghost stories aren't quite as scary when you know what is coming, and I have to admit that I didn't find this production quite as chilling as I remember it being four years ago. Despite this, the sense of fear in the 2016 revival of the production was palpable and effective in other ways.

The Turn of the Screw is more a study of fear than it is a traditional tale to scare the reader or the listener. Fear is contagious in the way that it spreads through Bly household here, and it isn't too much of stretch to consider it a model for how fear spreads in a wider community. Henry James didn't need to overstate the psychological implications of repressed impulses of the Governess in relation to the Victorian society of his time, and the wider implications don't need to be be spelled out for a modern audience either if the telling of the tale is true. When you have ghosts in a story this could present a problem, but the key to the story lies in how convincing we find the perspective and the actions of the Governess.

In as far as it was sung and played by Katie Bird, the importance of the role of the Governess as the propagator of fear in The Turn of the Screw is wonderfully effective. Fear, or at least anxiety that will later develop into fear, is evident from her first appearance on the stage just after the narrator's prologue. Will she like her new post? Will the children be nice? Will her employer be pleased with her? These concerns develop into a kind of over-protectiveness that infects Mrs Grose and leads, arguably, to a kind of mass hallucination that manifests the fear in the form of ghosts. Or it could be that the constant watching over Flora and Miles and pushing adult concerns down on them doesn't allow the children to be children.

What could be considered to be normal healthy behaviour for children, even if they are just a little bit naughty, is viewed with suspicion by the anxious Governess. It could be that the Governess, prompted by Mrs Grose's distaste for former employees, dredges up issues related to Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, conflates them with her own complexes and twists them in the minds of the children and the Governess into something more sinister. A lot of this is just speculation, and it's very much dependent upon what one wants to read into the work, but the greatness of The Turn of the Screw is that the ambiguity it creates around such situations allows events to be interpreted in a variety of ways.

It's harder to retain that sense of ambiguity on the stage, where concrete decisions and interpretations of one sort or another have to be made, but I think Oliver Mears' production manages to do this very well. I've already covered how the direct and simple stage designs work effectively to open up and close down the drama in my review of the original 2012 production at the Theatre at the Mill in Newtownabbey, and it still works here. What was great about the revival of the production, seen this time at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, was experiencing how well the singing and the musical performances were also attuned to project this sense of 'fear' consuming everyone who comes into contact with the Governess.

Principally, a lot of that was to do with Katie Bird's interpretation of the role. This was an outstanding singing performance that projected the fears of the Governess outward. There's a balance to be found between appearing to be neurotic or all out crazy and just letting anxiety break down the Governess's grip on reality, and Katie Bird covered that gradual disintegration almost imperceptibly. The Governess isn't aware of the fear she is sowing, believing her behaviour to be reasonable, proportionate, and indeed proper, but there's an edge of hysteria that becomes more and more apparent as events spiral and ghosts appear, and that was well integrated into the performance.

What is marvellous is not only could you detect this in how Bird sang and played the role, but the acoustics of the Lyric and Nicholas Chalmers' conducting allowed you hear how well Britten also scores and ramps up the tension, tightening the screw with little musical runs on the piano and the double bass. It's far from just eerie atmospherics and is suggestive of something much more complex in its psychology. Having just won an award for his ETO Hoffmann, Sam Furness was a good fit for this production's Peter Quint, while Giselle Allen reprised her chilling Miss Jessel. It's telling however that this production and the careful direction didn't allow either of the ghostly apparitions to overshadow Bird's Governess. Garbhan McEnoy brought a brittle vulnerability to Miles, working wonderfully alongside Lucia Vernon-Long's innocently teasing Flora to keep that delicious sense of ambiguity that is exploited so well on every level by NI Opera's still effective production of this ever intriguing work.

Links: NI Opera

Britten - Death in Venice (Teatro Real, 2014 - Webcast)

Benjamin Britten - Death in Venice

Teatro Real, Madrid - 2014

Alejo Pérez, Willy Decker, John Daszak, Leigh Melrose, Tomasz Borczyk, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Duncan Rock, Itxaro Mentxaka, Vicente Ombuena, Antonio Lozano, Damián del Castillo, Nuria García Arrés, Ruth Iniesta

Culturebox - December 2014

While on the surface Death in Venice is about much more than an old man's attraction to a boy's youth and beauty, it is the key to the essential conflict that the aging writer Gustav von Aschenbach struggles with on so many levels. In Death in Venice, the struggle extends to old age meeting youth, beauty confronted by ugliness, art versus mediocrity, fame or obscurity, control over submission and ultimately, of course, life versus death. Venice, a city of contrasts, embodies all of von Aschenbach's fears; a place of incredible beauty and allure that is fading and slowly crumbling into the sea, succumbing inevitably to the forces of nature.

Accordingly, most productions of Britten's Death in Venice tend to emphasise the beauty of Venice (I don't believe you can exaggerate it) without however really considering its dark corrupting side. Like Deborah Warner's acclaimed and successful production for the English National Opera, Willy Decker's production for the Teatro Real in Madrid is visually magnificent, but its clean modern minimalist designs don't seem to be the most natural way of probing beneath the surface to explore the slow decline of Venice alongside that of von Aschenbach, something that the writer seems to anticipate on his way there. 'Ah Serenissima!' '...where water is married to stone', 'what lies in wait for me here, ambiguous Venice?'

As with Warner's production, there are other less obvious ways to create the sense of unease that is evoked in the imagery of the libretto - Aschenbach's journey on a gondola to the Lido compared to crossing the Styx in a black coffin - and in Britten's music. Without intending to be disparaging, since it proves to be largely effective, what Willy Decker brings to the work is a sense of camp, where Aschenbach's desire to hold onto his dignity and reputation is in sharp contrast to the common and vulgar displays he encounters in the city. The first encounter is the most ominous; a kiss planted on him by an old traveller fooling around and having fun, made up to look younger than he really is.

There has to be an attraction there too however and this lively scene along with the handsome costume and set design of the production, can be seen to exert a strong first impression on von Aschenbach as he begins a journey of no return. A seductive rather than a stuffy elegance would be a better way to describe the tone of Decker's production designs. There's a blending of period costumes - the white linen suits and dressed of the holiday makers iconically familiar from Visconti's movie version of Mann's novella - mixed here with immaculate, shiny, minimalist location settings, that does succeed in establishing the kind of contrast and ambiguity that Venice in the opera represents.

That gives the work a freshness here, avoiding cliché or simple representation, while still adhering to the intent of the libretto. "There's a dark side even to perfection", von Aschenbach observes, and he notes the clever thought down in his notebook, always seeking to rationalise instead of feel. But there's an attractive allure to this dark side that the Madrid production captures well, the ornate classical mixing with the clean unadorned modernism, with just a hint of the exotic that is there also in Britten's score. These elements sit a little uneasily side-by-side but, particularly in the way that they are captured in Decker's production, they can also be complementary.

If the production looks terrific and works well enough with the material, it plays a little safe and doesn't entirely manage to achieve the desired impact by the end. Tadzio, for example, is well-characterised as if he could just be an ordinary boy, not one who is flirting on some level with von Aschenbach. The attraction and objectification is entirely on the part of the writer and his imagination, even if his being observed doesn't escape the boy's notice. This is always likely to be the case, but unless you see Tadzio the way Aschenbach does, it's a little harder to 'sympathise' with the confusion that this personification of classical beauty exerts upon him.

There are some good directorial touches that attempt to make this relationship explicit. The playfully dropped red ball is a good visual image for the connection between them, the dancing and choreography kept simplified and expressive, and there's a Punch and Judy show that does give some indication of the state of mind of von Aschenbach in his obsession. The singing is also exceptionally good from John Daszak in the principal role - one that has to be to really carry the work - with good support from Leigh Melrose as the traveller and the other minor parts, but there is never any real sense of how the sequence of events leads to any noticeable decline in Aschenbach.  The musical interpretation conducted by Alejo Pérez doesn't really manage to get the essence of this across either.

Links: Culturebox, Teatro Real

Britten - A Midsummer Night's Dream (Aix-en-Provence, 2015 - Webcast)

Benjamin Britten - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2015

Kazushi Ono, Robert Carsen, Sandrine Piau, Lawrence Zazzo, Miltos Yerolemou, Scott Conner, Allyson McHardy, Rupert Charlesworth, John Chest, Elizabeth DeShong, Layla Claire, Brindley Sherratt, Henry Waddington, Michael Slattery, Christopher Gillett, Simon Butterriss, Brian Bannatyne-Scott

Culturebox - July 2015

It's not the greatest idea that Robert Carsen ever had, but his huge bed setting for the 1991 production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, revived here for the 2015 Aix-en-Provence Festival, is stylish and has remained popular over the years. Although it doesn't seem entirely obvious, its bold conceptual approach isn't entirely without justification either, matching as it does Britten's very distinct and carefully structured take on the original Shakespeare play, while introducing even a little bit of Shakespearean vulgarity that Britten may have glossed over somewhat in the respectful translation to opera.

There is certainly a change of emphasis in Britten's version of the play, which places the dispute between the Fairy King and Queen Oberon and Titania at the centre of the opera. There are also two other love affairs that become entangled in this dispute in Act I, but quite whether this justifies having a huge bed taking up the whole of the stage in Act I is debatable. Most of Britten's adaptation actually takes place in the enchanted woods just outside Athens - Lysander and Hermia seeming to wander in there by chance, not so much fleeing the harsh Athenian law - but the idea is successfully developed and adapted to events in the subsequent acts.

Michael Levine's sets seem to take nature into the equation however in the blue/green colouration, the midsummer night mood and the spell it casts connecting the earthly and the spiritual, the human and the fairy. It's an expansive view of the world that is a key element to the original Shakespeare play and it's replicated in Britten's playful and meticulous musical mirroring of each of the various elements where each has their own particular style, sound and instrumentation. Most notably, considering their central position in the work, are the ethereal delicate sounds of the fairy world, with voices that include a countertenor for Oberon (a rarity in 1960 when the work was written) and a boy chorus for the elves.

There is however perhaps too much emphasis on the 'dreamier' side of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Britten's opera to the detriment of the more earthy and comic elements, but Carsen's production manages to redress the balance slightly. Mozart was undoubtedly an important influence on Britten, but although there are musical nods to older styles of music, including Baroque opera references in the third Act Pyramus and Thisbe drama, there are no obvious direct references to Mozart in the score. It's hard however not to imagine that The Magic Flute was very much in the composer's mind when it comes to bringing together diverse characters and musical styles and creating order out of the chaos in a celebration of love and harmonious accord.

It's interesting that Carsen's later take on Die Zauberflöte in a graveyard would indeed emphasise the harmony of all things more than the traditional divisions in Mozart's work, and to some extent that balance and Mozartian influence is evident in Carsen's much earlier production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In her blue attire, Titania is a Queen of the Night figure, while the green Oberon is a more earthly Sarastro figure (albeit at the other extreme end of the male voice). Their personal dispute, like the dispute between the opposing forces of Die Zauberflöte, is what causes discord in love among the various couples, and it's only by acceptance of the opposing sides of human rationality and spirituality in Carsen's interpretation of the Magic Flute (rather than one side defeating the other) that reconciliation to the wholeness of human brotherhood is possible.

This would coincide very well with Shakespeare's view in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which sees that inclusive union primarily brought together through Lysander and Hermia, the Tamino and Pamina of the work. You could also see parallels between the three boys of Die Zauberflote and the boy elf chorus of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bottom could be seen as a kind of Monostatos, and his getting into bed with the Queen of the Night is a catalyst, a monstrous alliance that does finally bring the opposing forces into a confrontation that requires a resolution. It's by no means a perfect fit, but there is much to be gained from comparing how Mozart deals with such questions and how Britten uses similar techniques to bring out similar sentiments in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

What Britten's opera lacks that Shakespeare's play relies on heavily (and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte), is the comedy to emphasise the earthy human spirit. Puck - the Papageno figure of the opera - is there to be used as a necessary force of chaos. Carsen and some good comic acting from Miltos Yerolemou, occasionally breaking the fourth wall, help bring that out a little more. Bottom is another vital part of this side of the work and it's scored beautifully for the lyrical bass-baritone voice by Britten. Played here by Brindley Sherratt, and sung wonderfully too, it still needs some good direction to bring out the comedic side of his bluster, and that's all there in the Aix production. A great donkey mask helps too and you couldn't ask for more than the well-designed one here that doesn't get in the way of the performer singing.

While comedy is an important part of A Midsummer Night's Dream, what is really important is that all of its diverse tones and moods come together to create a kind of wholeness that has a magic enchantment of its own. As numerous references in the play allude to, and they are there in Britten's version too, the whole play itself can be seen as something of a dream. Carsen's production in the courtyard of the Théâtre de l’Archevêché in Aix-en-Provence has all the scale and the style to make it work. The green/blue/white colour scheme, how it ties in with the music and instrumentation, the beds from one to six to the levitating three in the final act, all serve to create build up a sense of an enchanted world where love reigns as the mysterious force that binds us all together.

Links: Culturebox, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Britten - Death in Venice

Benjamin Britten - Death in Venice

English National Opera, 2013

Edward Gardner, Deborah Warner, John Graham-Hall, Andrew Shore, Tim Mead, Laura Caldow, Sam Zaldivar, Joyce Henderson, Marcio Teixeira, Peter van Hulle, Anna Dennis

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice' would have been a work that chimed with Benjamin Britten's sensibility on a number of levels.  It deals with several recurring subjects - children, innocence, death and corruption - that can be found in the composer's most famous works. If Britten's final opera has however never achieved the same recognition or popularity as his masterful treatment of those themes in Peter Grimes and The Turn of the Screw, it's probably less to do with the strength of the musical composition itself - which is among Britten's most adventurous and powerful - as much as the difficulty of presenting the awkward subject matter and the dark undercurrents found in Mann's short novella in an accessible way to a modern audience.

On a personal level, Death in Venice deals with some less comfortable private matters that Britten himself struggled with in regards to his homosexuality and his attraction to young boys. Perhaps more significantly, or at least deeply connected to these issues, the work also deals with the question of the nature of the artist in the later stages of his life. In the figure of writer Gustav von Aschenbach, Britten would surely have recognised the nature of the artist's struggles with his darker impulses, the line between maintaining order and finding freedom of expression, the need to keep some matters private and make other personal observations public, the recognition of what is an elevated thought and what is derived from a basic urge. All the while Britten, like Aschenbach, has to deal with ordinary human struggles with illness, age, and with the fear of being isolated or set apart from other people.

Thomas Mann's extraordinarily rich work then is fully comprehended by Britten and brought across into musical terms with remarkable facility and precision. The libretto, by Myfanwy Piper, captures the detail and essence of the work while Britten's music makes it come alive and feel real, allowing us to sympathise with the elderly writer's queasy fascination for a beautiful young boy observed on the Lido beach in Venice. The attraction is more than just lustful, but is inspired by the love of youth itself. As a writer, Aschenbach recognises however that there is something of a self-destructive urge in his abandoning himself to the passions stirred up by the Polish boy, Tadzio, whom he observes playing with his brothers and sister, but never actually approaches.

Already on his way to his hotel in Venice through an encounter with Apollo and Dionysus and in his crossing the Styx on a "coffin black" gondola, the elderly writer already has an awareness that his travelling entails a certain amount of self-exploration, a "sudden desire for the unknown" that involves breaking down his formerly rigid position on simplicity of beauty and form. Ordered, stylised and measured, he feels the need to give himself up to something freer, something closer to purity and perfection that can only be achieved through a recognition of the darker side of perfection. "To exist in it and of it", to live it and make it more than merely words on a page.

Such self-knowledge however only comes in old age from the experience of a life lived, and that there is a bitter cruelty or irony when this is confronted with the beauty and perfection of blithely ignorant youth. In youth there is everything that one aspires to enjoy, but the knowledge only comes when one has lost it and can never regain it. There's a fatal attraction then in what this old man feels for the young boy, a idealised desire to possess what one cannot have, a sincere wish to see this wonder of youth and beauty elevated and worshipped, but also a horror at the possibility of his own corruption, sickness and old age corrupting it.

Words can only take this description of Aschenbach's sentiments so far, and Piper's libretto achieves this extremely well, but Britten's extraordinary music takes our understanding for it much further and allows those other unspoken and undignified sentiments to be expressed. Most obviously there are Eastern references in the music and the instrumentation that speak of the Sirocco conflating it with Aschenbach's old age, sickness and corruption, but the musical language and small-scale, chamber-like structure finds other unconventional means of expression, including a counter-tenor to sing Apollo and using a dancer instead of a singer for Tadzio.

Small-scale and intimate it may be, but the sweep of the ideas expounded requires a much bigger canvas, and that presents certain challenges for the theatrical presentation of the work.  Deborah Warner's critically acclaimed production for the English National Opera with Tom Pye's inventive set designs achieve that quite brilliantly. There's an openness and simplicity to the designs that works with the text of the libretto without over-illustrating it, creating the mood and atmosphere of Venice through the use of colour, light and silhouettes with imagery suggesting water and skies. It looks ravishingly beautiful as well as suggesting an openness of scale. The space also allows room for the ballet dancers to express all that youthful freedom and ambiguity that is contained within the figure of Tadzio, or projected upon him by Aschenbach.

A lot then evidently rests on this first-person perspective of Aschenbach and it could hardly be better expressed than John Graham-Hall's performance here. Seen recently on DVD in a vivid and fearless performance of Britten's Peter Grimes, Graham-Hall's light tenor, beautiful in timbre and enunciation, is also perfectly suited to the character of Gustav von Aschenbach. In an interview made during the live television broadcast of this performance, the singer stated that despite the challenges of being the centre of the entire work and singing on-stage for a large part of the opera, the quality of Britten's writing makes the performance easy. He may be right, but there's more to it than he modestly suggests. It's a role that requires commitment and sensitivity to the variations of tone in Aschenbach's descent from order to chaos, and Graham-Hall's demeanour from sophisticated traveller to crumpled madman is perfectly judged and delicately phrased throughout.

English National Opera have really only recently embraced the idea of filming, broadcasting and releasing productions for the cinema and DVD, and if this production is anything to go by, we've a lot to look forward to in future projects. On Blu-ray this looks and sounds outstanding. The image quality is crisp and captures this magnificent, colourful production of Death in Venice beautifully. It might be a little to clinically perfect for some even. The audio tracks are also impressive, both LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 crystal clear, revealing all the detail of Britten's unconventional instrumentation. You can hear every single instrument and note in the superbly balanced mix and the quality and clarity of the singing. There are no extra features on the disc other than a Cast Gallery, but the booklet contains an essay and an outline synopsis of the 17 scenes. Subtitles are English, French, German and Korean only.

Britten - The Rape of Lucretia

Benjamin Britten - The Rape of Lucretia

English National Opera, Aldeburgh Festival 2001

Paul Daniels, David McVicar, John Mark Ainsley, Orla Boylan, Clive Bayley, Leigh Melrose, Christopher Maltman, Sarah Connolly, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Mary Nelson

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

Although it's come late in the year that also celebrated the work of Verdi and Wagner, the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten has done much to consolidate and even raise the reputation of Britain's greatest composer, and in the process highlight some unjustly neglected works. If Richard Jones was unable to salvage the reputation of Gloriana however, it must be hoped that this belated release of David McVicar's 2001 production of The Rape of Lucretia for the English National Opera, recorded by the BBC at the Aldeburgh Festival, will bring this more deserving work to the attention of a wider audience. The Rape of Lucretia is a work of extraordinary intensity and depth that sees Britten at his most distinctive and inspired.

Following the full orchestration of Britten's first opera Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia marks something of a rethinking of approach to opera that would have a significant impact on the style of much of the composer's later dramatic works. There appears to be a more overt religious Christian element here that one sees echoes of in the Canticles and in the Church Parables, but Britten's interest in the subjects of these works would appear to go beyond Christian parable towards less clearly defined and somewhat more ambiguous moral issues. What is most interesting in The Rape of Lucretia however is Britten's approach to the scoring of the work, not only reducing the orchestration to allow the instruments greater individual voices, but also striving to find a unique expression in them that doesn't always adhere to expected conventional dramatic writing.

The subject of The Rape of Lucretia then is a powerful one which, when combined with Britten's musical scoring of it, is almost harrowing in its intensity. All the more so when it's given a strong interpretation and that is certainly the case in this production. On the surface, the plot and the sequence of events that lead up to the event seem to be as direct and straightforward as the title of the work itself. A group of Roman generals have made a drunken bet over the fidelity of their wives and unadvisedly tested it as far as to confirm their own unenlightened views. Junius in particular is bitter about the outcome, remarking to Tarquinius that "Women are all whores by nature" that "Virtue in women is a lack of opportunity" and that they are only chaste when they aren't tempted. He's not beyond recognising the hypocrisy of his position either, noting that "men defend a woman's honour when they would lay siege to it themselves".

There is however one exception to the rule it seems - Lucretia, the virtuous wife of Collatinus. Tarquinius, the "Prince of Rome" however refuses to accept that she is any different from the rest and goes out of his way to prove it. He invites himself into her home, visits her bedroom at night and forces himself upon her. As harrowing an ordeal as this is for Lucretia, what proves to be more despairing and leads to her taking her own life is the reaction of her husband when he learns of what has occurred and the shame of what other people will say about her. On the surface then, the story seems a familiar operatic one - the defilement of the chastity of an innocent woman that one finds throughout bel canto and opera semiseria works (Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix or Rossini's Sigismondo) with the added piety of Schumann's only opera work, the magnificent Genoveva.

Having already written Peter Grimes however, it's not difficult to see in The Rape of Lucretia themes that preoccupy Britten throughout his musical career and even in his personal life relating to the corruption of innocence. Lucretia, for Britten however is about much more than just the defilement of a woman's saintly virtue, but touches on the nature of society and the values that it assigns to men and women. And at the heart of it, there's the question of violence, how it can be seen as acceptable in certain circumstances - the Roman-Etruscan war forms more than a backdrop for the work - or at least excused in the case of it being part of the nature of man. War is a subject of great importance to Britten and The Rape of Lucretia would seem to question whether this is necessarily the case, or whether pacifism isn't truer to the better nature of mankind.

It's commented on specifically by the 'Male Chorus', a single singer who represents one of the more interesting means of expression that Britten makes use of in this opera. The Male Chorus and the Female Chorus are omniscient overseers who are witness to the events, but who exist outside of time and the period in a way that allows them to consider the events from a later 'Christian' perspective. The Male Chorus observes that "For violence is the fear within us all / And tragedy the measurement of man / And hope his brief view of God". It's an important device that allows the composer a wider perspective and a contemporary relevance, and not insignificantly, it's a device that has been used recently in a very similar way by Martin Crimp and George Benjamin in their very contemporary view of the medieval storyline of Written on Skin.

It's Britten's musical arrangements however that are just as innovative, distinctive, modern and relevant. The reduced orchestration highlights the expression of individual instruments and heightens the dramatic tone and tension of the subject. Rarely does the music rely on any conventional signposting that tells you how to react to the drama, but instead it fulfils the primary function of music in opera by exploring below the surface and revealing other depths. It's beautiful and haunting, underpinning the drama in Britten's own developing idiomatic language, but it also expresses convictions that are important to the composer in relation to his own life, views that were out of place with the accepted conventions of prevailing social attitudes of the time.

How much David McVicar's direction contributes to the sheer power and intensity that comes across in this production is hard to judge. The set itself is relatively straightforward, unadorned and more or less period. One directorial choice that goes against the original specifications is in how McVicar involves the Male and Female Chorus more in the action. Not quite interacting with it, but certainly having more of a presence, and this works well, as it is an important feature of the opera. If it's difficult to point to any specific directorial choice that evidently has an impact on the performance, what is clear nonetheless is the McVicar gets the mood exactly right and his direction of the singers and the acting is what ultimately makes this a truly great production.

Which of course means that you need fine singers who can also act in order to do it justice. The cast here is great, although not all of them are in their prime. Sarah Connolly is still terrifically good, it's just that she's an even better singer now. Christopher Maltman too has also matured into a better singer, but he has always been a good actor is performance here is, if anything, just a little too creepy and disturbing. In this work however, that isn't a bad thing at all. John Mark Ainsley is at his best here as the Male Chorus and with Orla Boylan good as his counterpart, the Female Chorus. All the roles really are just terrific and the measure of the success of the production is that it's about as intense, well-sung, painfully well-acted performance of The Rape of Lucretia as you could wish for, a perfect match for Britten's remarkable score, which is revealed in all its brilliance here by Paul Daniels.