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
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.
