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The Rape of Lucretia at Cal Performances

TheBrittenProject_ROL_06_MatthewWorth(Tarquinius)&TamaraMumford(Lucretia)_Credit_GiuseppeDiLiberto * Notes * 
Cal Performances presented Castleton Festival's The Rape of Lucretia this week. The opera itself struck me as highly contrived, even for an opera, framed by not one but two narrators. There was a lot of telling rather than showing. The production was not particularly illuminating, though it did have moments of beauty, especially the lighting of the scene in Lucretia's room. On the other hand, the use of flashlights at the beginning of Act II was obnoxiously blinding.

The cast featured a host of fresh, youthful voices. Marnie Breckenridge and Alison Tupay sang Lucia and Bianca clearly. Ekaterina Metlova's contralto was impressive, her low notes had such richness and her high ones soared. Her accent in English was noticable, however. Michael Rice was strong as Collatinus, as was Michael Weyandt as Junius. Matthew Worth (Tarquinius) was terrifying as the villain. "Within this frail crucible of light" was incandescent, and Arianna Zukerman sang the female chorus smoothly. Vale Rideout (male chorus) also sang well. The orchestra played steadily under Lorin Maazel, never overwhelming the singing.

* Tattling * 
The backstage noise was distracting. Many stage directions were completely discernable from the audience.

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7 responses to “The Rape of Lucretia at Cal Performances”

  1. Matthew Felix Sun Avatar
    Matthew Felix Sun

    When I listened to it on recording, I loved it. When I saw it, I loved it less.
    The Male Chorus was a gratifying role for a tenor, but not necessarily for the audience. For an ideal dramatic structure, that role should have been made much smaller. However, since it was created for Britten’s life partner, wonderful tenor Peter Pears, the role was inevitably big; to balance it, the Female Chorus became unnecessarily big as well. They contributed to the drama, but perversely, reduced the drama by their over-long staying on stage.
    I couldn’t help but comparing this opera to Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex” which had more lurid and complicated story, yet its using of a commentator (a narrator) was much more appropriate in length. The Narrator related background stories and propelled the story headlong to its climactic conclusion; while here, the Male and Female Chorus force-fed the virtues and sacrifices of Jesus Christ and other Christians to the audience. It eventually became a spectacle audience was forced to partake, to witness the self-flagellation of the homosexual Benjamin Britten to tone for his “sin” publicly.
    Matthew Felix Sun

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  2. Doug Avatar
    Doug

    I enjoyed it and, like Matthew above, not as much as the recording. I found the director’s choices very uninteresting and, at times, painfully literal. He seemed to take the whole thing to a high school production pretty quickly. (We walked out of Albert Herring the next night, largely due to the awfulness of the directing.) The music of Lucretia was compelling and it was nice to see young singers doing their thing. I’m grateful to Cal Performances for bringing seldom performed opera into a less likely venue.
    There was some huge distraction in the house during the second half which apparently resulted in the cops being called (ah the unmistakable tunes of walkie-talkies). It seems that the front of house staff was in way over its head and handled a bad situation rather poorly. Management reports that new systems are in place should such an unlikely event happen again. My husband and I saw OT in the house and figured she’d be blogging about the event. Did OT not hear the disruption or is she just taking the higher road than I?

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  3. sfmike Avatar
    sfmike

    Oh, dear. Saw “The Rape of Lucretia” on Thursday evening, loved the music, and also thought the direction was at a “high school production” level which is not what the problematic libretto required. To hear that “Albert Herring” is even worse is depressing since we’ve got tickets for this afternoon. I love that the cops were called in on Friday evening. Probably those free Goldstar ticket people trying to move into better seats and being treated like crap by the ushers at Zellerbach.

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  4. Doug Avatar
    Doug

    Hey Mike, I do look forward to your review of Albert Herring and hope you enjoyed it much more than I. I’m a subscriber at Cal Perfs, and our ticket prices sure don’t strike me as high school production level either. With the usher piece, I don’t understand why Cal Perfs seems to undervalue and dismiss its patrons so much. Luckily, they often have some very exciting and rewarding evenings in their season each year, so I’m still going back for more to date.

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  5. The Opera Tattler Avatar
    The Opera Tattler

    Thanks for your comments. Definitely agree with your analysis of the chorus roles.

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  6. The Opera Tattler Avatar
    The Opera Tattler

    I didn’t realize that was part of all the noise. Thanks for letting us know!

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  7. The Opera Tattler Avatar
    The Opera Tattler

    Albert Herring really seemed to be mostly about throwing fruit.

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