With its poetic take on sexual violence, Britten’s 1946 chamber opera can be accused of idealising the unacceptable. That’s certainly not the case with Talia Stern’s masterful punch-in-the-gut production for British Youth Opera. Playing to an audience of 64, all within touching distance of a viscerally presented act of rape, the effect was physically shattering.
The opera is staged in Brunel’s Thames tunnel shaft, the original entrance to what in 1843 became the world’s first tunnel under a navigable river. Sunk into the ground and just 50ft in diameter, its smoke-blackened walls lend it the claustrophobic feel of a bunker in a modern war zone. Stern uses its stairs and platforms superbly, while Hazel McIntosh’s timeless costumes and simple raised dais locate the action anytime within the last 100 years.
