The Rape of Lucretia @ Meadows Lyric Theatre, SMU
Photos by Kim Leeson
—Wayne Lee Gay
Benjamin Britten's 1946 chamber opera The Rape of Lucretia, an ancient tale of political corruption and sexual violence, receives a superb performance in a handsomely conceived production by the Meadows Lyric Theatre of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts this weekend. Cast by Britten and his librettist Ronald Duncan in the form of a Greek drama, complete with a "chorus" of two soloists who narrate and comment, Lucretia provides a showcase for a consistently fine cast of young singers and the talented trio of graduate students who designed the production.
Cory Garret's effectively simple platform sets serve as an effective and efficient foundation on which the drama plays out; Shahrzad Mazaheri's timeless costumes, in a sort of hybrid renaissance-medieval-ancient mode, transcend time—except, significantly, for the two Chorus roles, who are clad in all-black modern business attire. Courtney Amaro's simple but assertive shifts of lighting effectively enhance the drama at key moments.
Tenor Nathan Bowles and soprano Bethany Jelinek bring flawless vocal technique, escaping cold narration for personal emotional reaction, as Britten and Duncan surely intended. Mezzo-soprano Karina Buruca-Kunda likewise delivers the title role (originally created for the great contralto Kathleen Ferrier) with the required intensity and dark timbre. Mezzo-sopranos Macy Mullins and Sarah E. Navy, as Lucretia's attendant maid and nurse, navigate these deceptively complex roles handily, providing a highlight of the performance in a gloriously fluid wordless duet as they perform the simple task of folding linen.
As Tarquinius, baritone Joseph Goodale presents the production's most convincing combination of singing with skillfully smooth acting in the role of a casual, careless rapist. As Junius, a Roman general, baritone David Womack likewise effectively combines a strong vocal performance within his role as a somewhat hot-headed, drunken military man. As Lucretia's husband Collatinus, bass Seth Clarke owns the strongest, most resonant voice in a very strong cast, hampered somewhat by a wooden, tenative dramatic delivery.
Conductor Parisa Zaeri, an SMU graduate currently based in Los Angeles, very ably guides the thirteen-member student chamber orchestra and the eight young singers through a complex score combining Britten's melodic gifts with modern harmonies and pungent instrumental colors. Producer-director Hank Hammett of the Meadows School faculty clearly encourages a solid but innovative approach to the work.
Of course, The Rape of Lucretia is much more than a useful piece for an ensemble company or a compact, neatly packaged chamber opera. Britten and Duncan added a twist of time and theology that gives the opera a thought-provoking complexity: while the interaction of Lucretia and her companions takes place circa 500 B.C.E. in pagan Rome, the two Chorus characters observe from the Christian era (at one point even claiming to have witnessed the crucifixion). Or possibly they are from our own time, given their modern but conservative dress in this production. In the narration and comments of the two Chorus roles, the Jesus of sorrow and suffering replaces the Olympian gods who would have been present in a classic Greek drama. And the Jesus they invoke is as distant and even more uninvolved than the Olympians.
Lucretia was created in a Britain still reeling from the horrors of World War II—and also still very much a land of cathedrals, parish churches, and chapels: the constant references to Jesus by the Chorus figures would have fallen on differently attuned ears in the England of 1946 than in the multi-cultural, religiously diverse culture we live in eighty years later. (That word "Methodist" in the name of the venue for this production further and intriguingly complicates the response of viewers, and, one might speculate, of the performers, as does the Bible Belt stretching for hundreds of miles in either direction outside Dallas city limits.) Tellingly, in this production, director Hammett exploits the final silence of the Female Chorus in the score as a quiet but visible rejection of the Male Chorus's invocation of Jesus.
One can also only speculate on the meaning, to the gay Britten, of the toxic heterosexuality of the plot—and, for that matter, on the extended monologue on the fragile nature and inherent dangers of love. Lucretia would be the first of a string of operatic masterpieces by Britten exploring not only the possibilities of the human voice with orchestra but the drama of human sexuality as well.
When: Repeated February 4 & 5
Where: Bob Hope Theatre, SMU Campus
