The removed item suggests Lucretia as complicit to her assaulter, Tarquinius, the plot as it remains becoming far more ambiguous. Paul Kildea reveals how the eventual approval of Lucretia’s story line shaped the whole opera, with a crucial part of the rape scene itself removed and replaced with rather softer material. The librettist, Ronald Duncan, had already collaborated with the composer on This Way To The Tomb and a few smaller works, and Lucretia was to be their dramatic apex.įirst the plot had to get past the Lord Chamberlain’s censors. Yet this opera, too, has a central character whose very fibre is shaken and questioned by a tragic event.Ĭolin Matthews, in a powerfully written booklet note for Oliver Knussen’s recent recording of the opera on Virgin Classics, makes the point that unlike Grimes, the story of Lucretia was brought to Britten. Epilogue: Is it all? (Male and Female Chorus)īritten was not a composer for following like with like, so in retrospect it is no surprise at all that an opera as massive and popular as Peter Grimes should be followed by something as controversial and sparse as The Rape of Lucretia. Last night Tarquinius ravished me (Collatinus and Lucretia) Lucretia! Lucretia! (Collatinus and Lucretia) Flowers bring to every year (Lucretia and Bianca) Oh! What a lovely day! (Lucia and Bianca) Tarquinius, Lucretia, Male and Female Chorus She sleeps as a rose (Male and Female Chorus) Time treads upon the hands of women (female quartet) There goes a happy man! (Tarquinius and Junius) It is an axiom among kings (Male and Female Chorus) Rome is now ruled by the Etruscan upstart (Male Chorus) Selected clips from the recording made by Benjamin Britten for Decca with Dame Janet Baker in the title role. COLLATINUS RAPE OF LUCRETIA DOWNLOADThe trailer for the 2013 Glyndebourne production, directed by Fiona Shaw:Ī podcast on the 2013 Rape of Lucretia is available for download here Text Ronald Duncan, after ‘Le viol de Lucrèce’ by André Obey The Rape of Lucretia – Opera in two acts, Op.37 (23 January –, Britten aged 32) Image courtesy of the Britten-Pears Foundation Britten and Ronald Duncan at Glyndebourne, 1946.
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