The Rape of Lucretia, Royal Opera, 16 November 2022

 

Linbury Studio Theatre

Lucretia – Anne Marie Stanley
Female Chorus – Sydney Baedke
Male Chorus – Michael Gibson
Tarquinius – Jolyon Loy
Collatinus – Anthony Reed
Junius – Kieran Rayner
Bianca – Carolyn Holy
Lucia – Sarah Dufresne

Oliver Mears (director)
Annemarie Woods (designs)
DM Wood (lighting)
Sarita Piotrowski (movement)

Aurora Orchestra
Corinna Niemeyer (conductor)

This new Rape of Lucretia, seen first at Snape, now in the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio Theatre, fittingly features singers from two young artists’ programmes: Britten Pears and Jette Parker. In many ways, its greatest strength is theirs—and that of the young Aurora Orchestra players too. (We tend to speak of a chamber orchestra here; were this ‘newer’ music, we should doubtless call it an ensemble.) Conducted by Corinna Niemeyer, this was an immediate, urgent performance which, like Oliver Mears’s immediate, urgent staging, was experienced to excellent, arguably heightened effect in a small theatre. For all aspects of production and performance came together to have us believe they had been conceived as one, almost as if a new work: a vindication not only of an opera whose different components can sometimes sit a little awkwardly with one another, but also of the very genre, currently under such devastating attack from the Arts Council. 

Mears’s staging responds to the postwar trauma of the work, bringing it very much into the foreground. I initially wondered whether that might be too much, too one-sided, whether participants in a modern conflict, brutal and brutalised, might find themselves instrumentalised, barely given chance to tell their own tale. That fear proved unfounded, though in this particular case I am not in general without sympathy with calls for greater abstraction or at least historical remove. The more I watched and listened, the more this seemed an entirely justified, indeed illuminating reading of the work. It was, after all, premiered in 1946. Violence, political and sexual—in war, in general too, they are rarely if ever to be dissociated—asked us difficult questions, from different standpoints, letting none of us off the hook. And the cast, crucially, brought this drama, these questions to life. 

Swaggering officers, with their own stories to tell, none the same, were the perpetrators. War did not let them off the hook; it was, after all, their war.  Britten’s pacifism loomed large, if unspoken. Even Collatinus was involved in an initial assault on an unnamed woman, though Junius and Tarquinius were more so, in increasing intensity. There was no doubting the heat of the night in which the rape took place, no denying this Tarquinius’s arrogant, damaged animal power, as Jolyon Lee stalked his prey in words, music, and gesture. We were led, if leading were necessary, to adopt the most troubling of male gazes, perhaps in some sense to share in guilt as well as horror. The servants knew what had happened too, one of the most discomfiting scenes being the morning after, when they could see what must have been, yet resolutely tried to carry on, not to mention it. Doubtless it did not befit their station, but it was also a matter of their trying to cope, as women, in this world. How many times had they seen such things before, indeed been assaulted themselves? Carolyn Holy and Sarah Dufresne brought these characters, here far from secondary, to vivid life in gesture and in voice, as indeed did all the cast in their roles. 

The tragedy of Anne Marie Stanley’s broken Lucretia’s suicide was spellbinding, the savagery of the deed not spared. She took centre stage, of course, but at what cost? As Collatinus trembled—horrified, weakened, and perhaps ultimately destroyed too—in Anthony Reed’s subtle portrayal, Kieran Rayner’s chameleon-like Junius, seized the aesthetic moment, capturing the corpse on camera for further dissemination. For we like to bestow the dubious, quasi-theological honour of sacrificial lamb after the event, once the deed has been done. Too late for Lucretia, as for the refugees fallen in our seas, on our beaches. Photography renders them literally iconic, especially when one can also hymn their tragic beauty. This was a properly disconcerting moment of self-recognition, or should have been. 

Instrumental obbligato lines took us back to Bach, to the cantatas and passions: in the case of oboe towards the close uncomfortably so, given the Chorus’s problematical Christian framing. Mears, for what it is worth, is the first director I have seen to tackle the issue of that framing head on. He did not, I think, offer an answer to the question, but the attempt by Male and Female Chorus to narrate and to explain seemed properly compromised. Were they, at the moment of their prayer of supplication, essentially attempting to convince themselves—and failing? The crisis of this peculiar pair, researchers into crime, perhaps even voyeurs, was increasingly apparent: surrogates in some sense for us, although surely the more ‘active’ participants were too. 

All the while, Britten’s score, its eery repetitions vocal and instrumental, its constructivist tendencies already presaging elements of The Turn of the Screw, held us in its thrall, not as something separate from what we saw on stage, but as driving force and still-more-troubling commentary. The sheer creepiness of what we call ‘fate’, yet which has all-too-human as well as divine and sociopolitical roots, is what Britten conveys so well; so too did his performers here.

The Rape of Lucretia, Guildhall, 24 February 2016

Silk Street Theatre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Collatinus – Milan Siljanov

Junius – Daniel Shelvey
Tarquinius – Christopher Cull
Male Chorus – Thomas Atkins
Female Chorus – Elizabeth Karani
Lucia – Jennifer Witton
Bianca – Elizabeth Lynch
Lucretia – Katarzyna Balejko

Martin Lloyd-Evans (director)

Jamie Vartan (designs)
Mark Jonathan (lighting)
Dan Shorten (video)

Orchestra of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Dominic Wheeler (conductor)

 

I shall not beat about the bush: this was the best performance of The Rape of Lucretia I have seen. It would be difficult – indeed unduly contrived, if not quite so contrived as the opera’s wretched Epilogue – to find anything much at which to cavil in the excellent performances from Guildhall musicians under Dominic Wheeler, or indeed in Martin Lloyd-Evans’s taut, powerful, musical production. Seen in the round, the orchestra at the same level as the stage, this could be experienced almost as a piece of music theatre, and emerged all the more strongly for it. Jamie Vartan’s designs are spare but telling, Mark Jonathan’s lighting subtly doing a great deal of the work. The Chorus has been there all the time, sharp-suited singers walking around the stage, through the audience, beforehand: pensive, maybe impatient, hurrying us to start and yet delaying. Or is that all in the imagination? Who can be sure? And does that matter? We do not really know who they are, after all. But, until that final, supremely unconvincing Christian promise of redemption – Britten’s own fault: one wants to shout, ‘What on earth has this to do with Christ’s Passion? – I responded to them in a way I have not before. Kinship with the not-quite-real, yet all-too-real, qualities of The Turn of the Screw is apparent to an unusual extent.

 

The Romans are portrayed convincingly in near-modern dress: perhaps the time of composition, maybe a little earlier? The narcissism of army dress uniform tells its own tale, especially when we sit so close to the action. One can certainly feel the physicality, the provocative nature of an opera, which, despite its unusual – for Britten – centrality of a female character, ultimately falls back just as much as the others upon male sexuality. The domesticity of Lucretia’s realm, its illusory peace, is hauntingly caught: spinning with echoes of a past fondly remembered, soon to be savagely destroyed forever by Tarquinius’s deed. We feel, as did Britten, the closeness, the monstrousness of war; but is society always in a state of war in one way or another? Is sex also war by other means? Nothing seems black and white here; Collatinus, after all, grows into his role, into compassion and forgiveness.

 

The singers impressed both vocally and as actors. I could not, if I wished, have selected a weak link. Milan Siljanov, Daniel Shelvey, and Christopher Cull played the three men similarly at first, distinctions becoming later. Where Cull’s Tarquinius lost control of his actions via excellent vocal control, Collatinus and Junius pulled in different directions. Attention to words and music was exemplary. Likewise with Katarzyna Balejko’s rich-toned, imploring Lucretia: a victim with whom one could sympathise deeply, not that that would do her any good. Jennifer Witton and Elizabeth Lynch proved equally sympathetic women of the household, trying to do their best in an impossible situation, their lack of success again a factor drawing us in to their particular and general plight. Thomas Atkins and Elizabeth Karani carefully, excitingly trod a fine Choral line between observation and participation.

 

That, as I suggested above, served to highlight connections with The Turn of the Screw: not just onstage, but perhaps still more importantly, in musical terms. (The distinction seemed unusually false in this case.) For not the least of this cast’s and this production’s virtues was the strong impression they gave that their decisions sprang from Britten’s highly ‘constructed’ score. That could not have happened, of course, without highly committed, concentrated playing from Wheeler and the excellent young orchestral players. The closed forms may be more overt, less complex than those of Wozzeck, but the cumulative effect was perhaps not entirely dissimilar. Figures, harmonies, rhythms lodged themselves in the mind and would not let go: like the tragedy enacted on stage. If only someone could solve the problem of that Epilogue… Otherwise, and in any reasonable sense, outstanding! I have no doubt that we shall see and hear much more from these singers; I look forward to doing so.

The Rape of Lucretia, Klangforum Wien, 5 April 2008

(concert performance)

Konzerthaus, Vienna

Angelika Kirchschlager – Lucretia
Emma Bell – Female Chorus
Ian Bostridge – Male Chorus
Christopher Maltman – Tarquinius
John Relyea – Collatinus
James Rutherford – Junius
Jean Rigby – Bianca
Malin Christensson – Lucia

Klangforum Wien
Robin Ticciati (conductor)

The idea of Britten in Vienna was appealing. No music benefits from being treated as the property of a particular nation – unless, that is, such particularist ‘tradition’ involves special pleading. Britten anyway seems now to be gaining greater exposure on the Continent than would have been the case until quite recently. Looking at the cast list, however, dispelled the illusion that this might have been a truly international performance. There is, of course, nothing wrong with casting English singers, but it was more of a home from home than one might have initially expected. Angelika Kirchschlager and Malin Christensson were the only exceptions to the Anglophone rule.

That said, there was no uniformity amongst the cast. Ian Bostridge and Emma Bell delivered their roles as Chorus with great skill, although in rather different fashion. With Bostridge, most listeners will know what to expect. The contorted facial expressions were not for the queasy, and there was, needless to say, more than a little vocal mannerism. Britten supplies quite enough of that already for my taste. By the same token, however, Bostridge’s delivery was in general impressively handled, with due attention paid to words, pitch, and modulation. It was only really during the Interlude to Act One, in which the Male Chorus recounts Tarquinius’s furious ride to Rome, that I felt the music and words ran away with him a little. (This may of course not have been by the singer’s own design.) Bell, by contrast, provided a ‘straighter’ reading, for which I stood most grateful. This is not intended to imply dullness or lack of imagination, but it was well focused and free of histrionics, if a little obscure of diction on occasion.

This was not a problem for Christopher Maltman, who to my mind delivered the best performance of the evening. One could sense him itching to be on stage, without this compromising the conditions of concert performance. Every word was made to tell, and the character of Tarquinius – dangerous, powerfully attractive, yet in thrall to his passions and so ultimately weak – was superbly portrayed. I cannot summon up a single caveat regarding this performance. John Relyea was also very fine in the less interesting role of Collatinus. I had most recently heard him in Sir Colin Davis’s LSO concert performance last year of Benvenuto Cellini, and there was no sign of dilution of promise. Relyea has a fine, truly powerful voice, which he knows how to marshal. James Rutherford, by contrast, was a variable Junius. Much of what he sang was respectable, but there was too much imprecision with regard both to pitch – mostly in the lower notes – and to diction.

Perhaps surprisingly, the best female diction came from Malin Christensson, whose silvery soprano was a delight in the role of Lucia. Her interest in Tarquinius, both before and after the deed – unbeknown to her, of course – was genuinely touching. Jean Rigby was in general a characterful Bianca, although not especially alluring. Angelika Kirchschlager varied in the role of Lucretia. Much of her portrayal was impressive: well-acted, within the constraints of a concert performance, and secure of tone. Sometimes, however, the acting got the better of the music, which is more of a problem in a concert performance than on stage. Her words were not always clear either. I have mentioned diction a few times, because it is important in itself, but also since if I, as a native English-speaker could often not discern the words, then I doubt that many of the Viennese could. Printing the words with German translation in the programme doubtless helped, but consulting them should be a last resort.

For the Klangforum Wien I have nothing but praise. The ensemble’s contribution was the clearest example of Britten freed from parochialism; the music clearly benefited. I do not regard all of the score as equally successful; Britten’s musical facility too often led him in the direction of mere note-spinning. However, the passages most obviously ‘constructed’ here gained an almost Schoenbergian instrumental intensity, relating more to inter-war modernism than to Suffolk. The strings were perhaps exceptional in this regard, but that is more a reflection upon the score than upon the performance. Nothing, I am afraid, can repair the dramatic flaw of the Christian ‘interpretation’ – by turns sentimental, incoherent, or both – transplanted onto an inherently powerful plot, but Klangforum Wien reminded us that there was musical interest nevertheless. I was less sure about Robin Ticciati’s direction. There was nothing terribly wrong with it, apart from a few overtly interventionist passages that simply sounded exaggeratedly slow or fast. For the most part, though, it was not clear that he really added anything. Perhaps most of his work had been done during rehearsal, but the ensemble seemed often – very successfully – to be doing its own thing. Eyes were certainly not always upon the conductor, whose beat seemed vague and who certainly did not help by ostentatiously performing the piano part himself. Just because one can does not mean that one should; numerous instances of arising from the piano stool should either have been more unobtrusively handled or, better still, rendered unnecessary by engaging a pianist from the ensemble. Still, the instrumentalists, every one of them, sounded excellent regardless, although even they could not entirely disguise some of Britten’s more threadbare invention.