With its origins in ancient Roman myth, the brutal rape that lies at its centre, its mannered libretto and its explicit Christian messages, The Rape of Lucretia is the quintessential “difficult” opera – despite its extraordinary power. Much of this power comes from its intense intimacy: writing for much smaller forces than the “grand opera” Peter Grimes that preceded this work, Benjamin Britten uses virtuosic vocal writing and eerie orchestral textures to weave together a hard-hitting, atmospheric theatre work that sounds and feels unlike anything else in the repertory.
The Rape of Lucretia premiered at Glyndebourne in 1946 in a staging with studiously “Roman” designs by John Piper that artfully and deliberately created distance between creator and subject matter. When asked why he wrote the piece, Britten typically (and evasively) answered “because I’m rather interested in that kind of thing, you know”.
