Opera review: Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia

 First seen at Glyndebourne in 1946 with Kathleen Ferrier in the title role, it provides meaty roles for the entire cast. 

All credit to Guildhall School of Music And Drama for choosing Britten’s most difficult work for its Opera Course students. Director Martin Lloyd-Evans and designer Jamie Vartan have devised an austere set of an earth rectangle framed by a border, and a pit at the back for exits and entrances. 

The time is split between ancient Rome during the Etruscans’ reign and a present day Chorus of one man and one woman who narrate and comment on the tragic events at the side. 

At the start of the opera, three generals in red mess jackets are getting drunk around a table and complaining about the unreliability of women. Only Collatinus’s wife Lucretia is considered to be pure. 

Encouraged by the jealous Junius, Prince Tarquinius decides “to prove Lucretia chaste” and gallops off in the night to Rome, where Lucretia is obliged to offer hospitality to the unexpected visitor. The formal “Good nights” as they retire to sleep are restrained and uneasy.

Bethan Langford’s serene Lucretia, sure of her place in her husband’s affections, is transformed into a traumatised woman after the violence committed on body and soul. 

Her performance remains in the mind long afterwards. 

David Ireland is a bluff Collatinus and Dominic Sedgwick an edgy Junius, too late realising the destruction in which he has connived. Josep-Ramon Olive captures the careless arrogance of the ruling class in Tarquinius while Elgan Thomas and Elizabeth Karani deal adeptly with the Chorus, though more articulation is needed at times.

Under conductor Dominic Wheeler, Guildhall School’s Orchestra brings out the atmospheric score, in ominous strings and threatening drum rolls. The last performance of the double cast opera, with Katarzyna Balejko in the title role, is tomorrow. Worth catching if you can get tickets.