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United Kingdom Britten, The Rape of Lucretia: Soloists, Aurora Orchestra / Corinna Niemeyer (conductor). Linbury Theatre, Covent Garden, 13.11.2022. (CC)
Production:
Director – Oliver Mears
Designer – Annemarie Woods
Lighting – D. M. Wood
Movement director – Sarita Piotrowski
Fight director – Bret Yount
Intimacy route – Intimacy On Set (lead, Ita O’Brien)
Cast:
Lucretia – Anne Marie Stanley
Tarquinius – Jolyon Loy
Collatinus – Anthony Reed
Junius – Kieran Rayner
Lucia – Sarah Dufresne
Bianca – Carolyn Holt
Female Chorus – Sydney Baedke
Male Chorus – Michael Gibson
It has been some time since I reported on a Britten The Rape of Lucretia – 2003, the truth is, when Dame Sarah Connelly took the title position on the Barbican Theatre, with Christopher Maltman as Tarquinius. Chronologically, this 1946 two-act opera comes instantly after Peter Grimes and The Turn of the Screw (its relevance will likely be made clear later) was to return in 1954.
Britten and his librettist, Ronald Duncan (who based mostly it on André Obey’s play Le Viol de Lucrèce) assemble a outstanding edifice. The use of Male and Female Chorus (really every just one voice) is a masterstroke. The opera is ready in Roman occasions in accordance with the libretto; Oliver Mears offers it a recent setting in a contemporary, sparse flat – the one set is stored fixed all through, and Annemarie Woods’s design appears good: nearly clinically clear, considerably minimalist, it is sort of a clean canvas that may ultimately be painted with blood. The thought of Roman armies, generals and so forth is mapped onto up to date military gown; and with that, the attendant machismo and all that that entails – together with emotions of invincibility of troopers and their resultant actions, be it wanton ingesting, posturing or, on this excessive case, rape.
For this manufacturing, Mears labored with an all-female inventive workforce to create a remarkably highly effective expertise. We are offered by a lightweight curtain which is drawn apart and closed at numerous factors by the Choruses. By having the Choruses not solely observe from the stage sides but additionally stay lively onstage while the drama is ongoing is fascinating – there may be nearly the sensation that they’re the ghosts of The Turn of the Screw. The choruses themselves are proven as a Christian couple, with Female Chorus sporting what appeared to be a crucifix round her neck. As ‘observers’ they can’t interrupt the movement of occasions, solely touch upon it – thereby creating a further layer between the viewers and the drama itself, permitting for some stage of emotional separation.
The thought of a static set means lighting experience is a paramount requirement, and D. M. Wood is an knowledgeable with shadow. It is on this house we meet our singers, however earlier than we do it’s worthwhile figuring out the one nice fixed on this efficiency. Diction was immaculate all through from all contributors, one thing that’s so hardly ever encountered. Surtitles had been successfully rendered ineffective, and that was a pleasure in itself.
Of the characters, two, Sydney Baedke and Jolyon Loy, are Britten Pears Young Artists; the rest of the forged are members of the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker scheme. As Lucretia, Anne Marie Stanley owns the stage (she coated Thurza in Glyndebourne’s current The Wreckers, by the way); her voice is highly effective and but can usher in probably the most outstanding vulnerability and, certainly, emotional ache because the work hurtles in direction of its tragic conclusion. British baritone Loy is probably the most macho of Tarquiniuses, an enormous brute of a person who convinces us that he’s led by base intuition; and but his voice is versatile and able to a large number of shades. A profitable actor has to make us dislike this character, and at that, Loy excelled.
Much thought had clearly gone into the casting. The Male and Female Choruses (Baedke and Michael Gibson respectively) labored supremely effectively collectively, each vocally and dramatically. Carolyn Holt’s full-voiced Bianca was a pleasure, however the actual discovery certainly needs to be the Lucia of Canadian soprano Sarah Dufresne. With actual stage presence and a lightweight, clear voice that was by no means as soon as insubstantial, she was the best casting in an opera that was already forged to the very highest ranges (she joins the Jette Parker scheme in 2022/23 after a spell at Montréal’s L’Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal). She will, I consider, be a significant addition to the scheme.
Kieran Rayner was a high-quality, robust Junius; Anthony Reed as Collatinus revealed a superbly targeted voice and, extra, convincing expressions of continued love within the second act. The remaining moments of the opera had been as heart-wrenching as something on the principle stage – someway the small forces appear extra of a discount all the way down to necessities than any form of compromise.
While the subject material of the opera is stark and brutal, it ought to be firmly acknowledged that Britten’s music is magnificently variegated – there are moments of the utmost magnificence, each when it comes to luminous scoring and in solo contributions (most notably that poignant, and prolonged, cor anglais solo). This brings us to the orchestra and its conductor, Corinna Niemeyer, presently Artistic and Music Director of the Orchestra de Chamber du Luxembourg. Niemeyer’s sensitivity to Britten’s scoring was as impeccable as her sense of directionality – she clearly understands the work’s bigger canvas, which lent the dénouement a selected musical energy. There had been moments of illumination, too – a very Stravinskian tinge to the chord progressions on the repeated declarations of ‘Good night’, for instance, like a processional to the gallows. Remarkable – as is every thing about this manufacturing and efficiency. This shouldn’t be solely the Royal Opera at its highest – it reveals nice hope for the brand new technology of singers coming into their very own proper now.
Colin Clarke
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