The Rape of Lucretia, Merola Opera Program, July 11 2013

The historical rape of Lucretia is an event that may or may not have happened in Rome in 509 BC; at that remove it’s not clear how much is fact and how much is legend. What is clear is that many authors over the centuries, including Ovid in 8 AD and Shakespeare in 1594, have made use of the legend. The story has it that the son of an Etruscan general raped the wife of an associate of the Roman king. The rape of Lucretia and her subsequent suicide precipitated a revolution that expelled the Etruscans and established the first Roman republic.

Benjamin Britten based his opera on a 1931 play by André Obey, Le Viol de Lucrèce, which in turn relies heavily on Shakespeare. By the technical definition of “chamber music,” which means that there is only one player per part, Britten’s opera is chamber music. The orchestra consists of 12 players, or 13 if you include the conductor who accompanies the recitatives on the piano. The “male chorus” and “female chorus” consist of one singer each.

For his setting of this production, the director chose to tie the events of the opera to modern scandals of sexual impropriety in today’s military by having those events occur in a military tribunal. To the left and right of the stage were simple steel chairs, arranged on a series of broad steps. In the middle there were two metal folding tables. The three male principals sat in the chairs to the right, dressed as generals; the three female principals (Lucretia, her old nurse, and a maid) sat in the chairs to the left. The male and female chorus sat in the middle as though they were officials of the court.  The violence of the rape of Lucretia by Tarquinius near the beginning of the second act was depicted by having Tarquinius throw various court papers around and overturn tables and chairs.

Our cast:
Lucretia: Kate Allen
Bianca: Katie Hannigan
Lucia: Alisa Jordheim
Collatinus: David Weigel
Tarquinius: Chris Carr
Junius: Efrain Solis
Male chorus: Robert Watson
Female chorus: Linda Barnett
Conductor: Mark Morash
Director: Peter Kazaras
     
 Of these, the most impressive was David Weigel in the role of Lucretia’s husband Collatinus. He’s the one I’d like to watch, but I won’t be able to see him again this summer. At the other end of the scale, Alisa Jordheim sang with a squeaky little-girl voice that didn’t work for me. She will be on stage again this summer as Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro. Overall, the first act was a bit of a drag (full disclosure: this was my first Lucretia; often opinions improve on a second and third hearing), but by the second act the singers seem to have found the groove. Somewhere between a gamma and a beta.