![]() The pristine domestic interior is a feminine space, all flower vases and florals. Why does she commit suicide? As St Augustine wondered, ‘If she is adulterous, why is she praised? If chaste, why was she put to death?’ Perhaps to make sense of her death, Duncan added an anachronistic Christian framing device to his florid, verbose libretto, which has no relevance to the original Roman context – though, in fact, the libretto drafts confirm that it was Britten who proposed the much-criticised Christian epilogue which was intended to verify the redemptive nature of Lucretia’s death.Īnne Marie Stanley (Lucretia) Carolyn Holt (Bianca) © Camilla Greenwell ![]() But, Britten seems to have been less interested in the Roman soldiers and to have identified more strongly with Lucretia, not as a woman of flesh and blood, but as a site for tension between desire and violence whose beauty and virtue co-exist in an unstable alliance, as likely to incite lust and goodness. The first English Opera Group production, at Glyndebourne in 1946, was set in ancient Rome and utilised a rather stylised classical design. In the interlude in which the latter rides to Lucretia’s house, the Male Chorus seems to exult in the soldier’s machismo: “In blood furious,/ With desire impetuous/ Burns for its quietus / With speed aflame through sweat and dust/ The arrow flies straight as lust.” Moreover, the evidence of the libretto suggests that Ronald Duncan seems to have identified with the masculine power and virility of Tarquinius. Yes, it takes place during a period of conflict, and Britten brings the soldiers’ dangerous, inebriated revelry to life in his opening scenes. I’m not sure that ‘war’ is what Britten’s opera is really about, though. Mears seems concerned with both the consequences of the war and cataclysmic events that Britten had just lived through in 1946 and with the wars of our own time. ![]() It is a drama of toxic masculinity, female victimhood and of crimes, so often unreported and unpunished, here exposed.Īnne Marie Stanley (Lucretia) Anthony Reed (Collatinus) © Camilla Greenwell Premiered during a Britten Weekend at Snape Maltings, and shortly to be staged in the ROH’s Linbury Theatre, Mears’s production aims to dramatise the brutalisation of combatants and the weaponisation of violence against women in the context of war. In his new production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia (a co-production by Britten Pears Arts and the Royal Opera House), director Oliver Mears attempts to drag the Roman myth and Britten’s 1946 opera into the twenty-first century. According to Roman custom, her death restores her husband’s honour, acts as a catalyst for a Roman rebellion against the Etruscans and thus serves as a revolutionary act which leads to a more consensual form of political rule. Knowing that her violation – an assault on Collatinus’s ‘property’, one which is symbolic of the abuse of the ruled state itself – brings dishonour on her husband’s name, Lucretia sends a messenger to summon Collatinus home, makes a public confession and kills herself. Jealous of Collatinus’s boasting about Lucretia’s virtue and chastity, Tarquinius rides to Collatinus’s house and attacks Lucretia. ![]() ![]() The myth of Lucretia, first told by Livy, tells of the rape of Collatinus’s eponymous wife by his fellow soldier, Tarquinius, the son of the Etruscan king who rules over Rome. ![]()
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