In Review > North America
The Rape of Lucretia
PITTSBURGH
Pittsburgh Opera
1/30/10
Britten wrote The Rape of Lucretia with some of the finest singers of his time in mind. The 1946 Glyndebourne premiere and a subsequent tour with two "equal" alternating casts included in the title role Kathleen Ferrier and Nancy Evans (Walter Legge’s first wife before he married Elisabeth Schwarzkopf); as Male Chorus, Peter Pears and Aksel Schiøtz; and as Tarquinius, Otakar Kraus and Frank Rogier (who was also to be the first Ben in Menotti’s The Telephone). Since then, because Lucretia requires only eight singers and twelve instrumentalists, the work has been taken up by workshops and young artist groups. It proved an apt vehicle for Pittsburgh Opera’s resident artists in a powerful production in the lovely 400-seat Creative and Performing Arts Theater (seen Jan. 30).
Despite its small forces, Lucretia is big in content, a deeply serious work with a highly literate (some have said overly literate) libretto by Ronald Duncan and a score containing some of Britten’s most noteworthy and profound music. The Male Chorus’s cinematic depiction of Tarquinius’s ride to Rome is a tenor aria unique in the literature; "Within this frail crucible of light," in which the antihero summons up his courage before entering Lucretia’s bedroom, is pure bel canto. The rape scene is downright scary in its up-to-date immediacy. In the final scene, Lucretia’s flower aria and the English horn solo that precedes her declaration of love for Collatinus are almost unbearably painful in their expression of sorrow.
Glenn Lewis presided over an excellent ensemble of local union musicians, and the physical production was a product of a fruitful collaboration between Pittsburgh Opera and Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama. Scott Tedmon-Jones created an eye-catching utilitarian set — strikingly lit by Stevie Agnew — that served as ramparts, atrium and bedroom, while Kim Lorentz’s costumes spanned several eras from the classically-robed women to soldiers in SS uniform and the Male and Female Choruses (solo tenor and soprano) in modern missionary dress.
Stage director Dan Rigazzi allowed the Choruses to move around the stage, snooping on the salacious pre-Christian characters without participating, as they re-interpret (or misinterpret) actions and events according to their own religious precepts. Within the action itself, the rape scene tableau evoking a Titian painting was particularly effective, though it lasted a few moments too long and might have benefited from a strategic blackout.
Lindsay Ammann’s sumptuous contralto sound and statuesque persona made this Lucretia a force to be dealt with. She was strong and alluring, and in Rigazzi’s staging she did not submit easily to the youthful, mellifluous Tarquinius of Dan Kempson. Later, she used gesture and nuance skillfully to convey a gamut of emotions from hysteria (on "Give him the orchid") to controlled desperation (in the "Flowers" passage") to the highest grief in her confession. Her two ladies — Katherin Drago as Bianca and Sharon Kessler Dooley as Lucia — provided deft characterizations and sturdy sound.
Tenor Noel Batege negotiated the high-flung lines of the Male Chorus with brilliant tone and clear diction, though at times he flagged in resonance and support in the middle and lower part of his voice. As the Female Chorus, Danielle Pastin sang with lustrous, luscious timbre, cutting through even where the tessitura lies significantly below a soprano’s normal range.
Liam Moran was a sensitive, reverberant Collatinus; Craig Verm — an Opera Center alumnus — made a strong impression as the cuckolded Junius with his robust, focused tone and affecting delineation of outward swagger and concealed embarrassment. 
ROBERT CROAN
