![]() ![]() Mark Delevan as Tarquinius began a bit stiffly but improved in Act 2. "I've discovered that being simple and considering things spiritual of importance produces violent reactions," Britten observed.Į. in His passion is our hope." This ending has been controversial since the opera premiered in 1946 (a time when Britten was much preoccupied with the problem of evil). The male chorus' answer that it is not Christ "bears our sin and does not fall. "Is this it all?" the female chorus asks at the end. This might seem a lot of pointless cruelty on stage, despite some of Britten's most lyrical music and some shrewdly observed characterizations, but the composer uses it to put forward a Christian answer to the problem of evil. Amid the general mourning, Junius reverts to being a political animal with an impassioned speech: "Romans, arise! See what the Etruscans have done!" She sends for her husband, tells him of her dishonor and commits suicide. When Lucretia resists his advances, he becomes violent and takes her by force. "Virtue in women is a lack of opportunity," he insists. Only Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, had been innocently at home, and Junius is particularly upset at his Patricia's infidelity - partly because he fears it will hurt his political career.Īfter Collatinus goes to bed, Junius persuades Tarquinius to ride into Rome and test Lucretia's virtue. The night before, a number of Roman officers had gone home from camp unexpectedly to see what their wives were doing in their absence. Rome is at war with Greece and ruled by the ruthless Etruscan Tarquinius Superbus, whose son Tarquinius Sextus is drinking with two Roman generals, Junius and Collatinus. They are costumed in Victorian style and the set is the cluttered interior of a Victorian mansion, with many apparently random objects (a hobby horse, a spinning wheel, a toy carousel) used expertly for their symbolic overtones. The staging, by Nicholas Muni, puts the ancient Roman story in a modern context, with the male and female chorus (two solo singers who turn out to be the leading roles) telling the old story of pride, lust, arrogance and violence and drawing from it a Christian moral. ![]() The music is beautiful - never more beautiful than in the stylized horror of the rape scene itself - and it is performed exquisitely by a cast of highly talented young singers under the baton of Cal Stewart Kellogg, who has the style exactly right. But the production playing at the Barns of Wolf Trap (with one more performance tomorrow night) pleads its cause as eloquently as one can imagine. "The Rape of Lucretia" by Benjamin Britten appeals to a fairly specialized operatic taste, and it has not escaped criticism even among devotees of modern opera.
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