Arts & Events

Carrie-Ann Matheson, San Francisco Opera Center Artistic Director, indicates that as part of Merola Opera’s training responsibilities for young singers, care must be taken to give them support in singing roles that often call for women to be abused and even die at the hands of men. In fact, too many operas sport exactly this scenario. Given how prevalent sexual abuse against women is present in our contemporary American society, the challenge today is to dramatise the issue of sexual violence by males against women not just as something in opera librettos from the Baroque to the present, but also as an issue still all too present today in society. Thus, with the #Me Too movement in mind, Carrie-Ann Matheson decided to have Merola Opera take on Benjamin Britten’s controversial opera The Rape of Lucretia. 

Set in Rome during the reign of the Etruscan Tarquins around 500 BCE, The Rape of Lucretia contrasts the rowdy masculine arrogance of Roman generals and the gentle world of three women — Lucretia, the loving wife of Collatinus, and her two attendants-confidantes, Bianca and Lucia. Based on the play Le Viol de Lucrece by French writer André Obey, with an English translation by librettist Ronald Duncan, Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia offers a searing indictment of male violence against women. 

Carrie-Ann Matheson put together a carefully chosen team to mount this opera. German director Jan Essinger was selected to stage this production, and Judith Yan was chosen to be its conductor. In addition, the Scenic Designer was Sonja Fūstl, Costume Designer was Christine Crookk, Lighting Designer was David Robertson, and in an effort to ensure that the singers would be comfortably supported in performing this opera’s often violent material, Maya Herbsman was chosen as Intimacy Director. 

This was indeed a praiseworthy project. And, happily, I can report that Merola Opera has risen admirably to this task, not only with a production that does not shy away from the extreme violence of male sexual abuse against women, but also by showing a woman, Lucretia, who refuses to submit passively to this male violence, who instead fights back against it at every moment in this horrific tale. Further, by offering a post-performance discussion on Saturday, July 15, Merola Opera gave the production team and singers, and even the audience, an opportunity to address the issues of sexual violence against women. However, neither in interviews by Carrie-Ann Matheson nor in Saturday’s post-performance discussion, was there any acknowledgment of the groundbreaking work in this area by French philosopher Catherine Clément’s 1979 book L’Opéra ou la Défaite des Femmes (Opera or the Undoing of Women.). To my mind, credit was definitely due to Catherine Clément; and it was unfortunately lacking in the American perspective offered here. 

In The Rape of Lucretia, Benjamin Britten employs a framing structure in which two singers, one male and one female, assume the role of a male and female chorus who comment upon the actions portrayed by the opera’s protagonists. This device is similar to the use of choruses in ancient Greek tragedy. In this Merola Opera production of The Rape of Lucretia, the role of the male chorus was robustly sung by tenor Chance Jonas-O’Toole, and the female chorus was sensitively performed by soprano Caroline Corrales. As this opera opens, the two choruses summarise the sordid, corrupt and licentious reign of the Tarquins, Emperor Tarquinius Superbus and his son, Tarquinius Sextus, referred to as The Prince of Rome. Further, in a highly questionable move, Britten and his librettist overlay their story with a Christian perspective that is anachronistic for a tale that is set 500 years before the birth of Christ. Both here in the opera’s Prologue and also in its ending, the Christian perspective seems wrongfully forced. 

Following the Prologue, the scene shifts to a Roman army camp just outside Rome where the Romans await a battle against Greeks. It is night, and the Romans are drinking heavily and discussing their bet of the night before, a bet that involved a surprise return to Rome to check on whether their wives were faithful in their husbands’ absence. Only Collatinus’s wife, Lucretia, was found to be faithful, so he won the bet. But this also produced jealousy on the part of the losers, especially Tarquinius and Junius. Indeed, so incensed is Tarquinius that when the others have retired to their tents for the night, Tarquinius abruptly mounts his horse and rides to Rome to challenge the chastity of Lucretia. In this Merola production, Collatinus was sensitively sung by bass-baritone James McCarthy, Tarquinius was pridefully sung by baritone Samuel Kidd, and Junius was judiciously sung by baritone Cameron Rolling. 

Now the scene shifts to Lucretia’s house in Rome, where she, Bianca and Lucia sit peacefully at their spinning wheels. The three women engage in a lovely spinning song, accompanied by flute and harp. However, in director Jan Essinger’s staging of this scene, there are no spinning wheels and instead the women anachronistically light a series of small electric lamps. This was an unwelcome mistake in an otherwise splendid production, although an even greater staging mistake occurs near the end of this opera, which will be dealt with later. In general, Britten’s music for this scene of female domesticity offers a gentle, peaceful contrast to the belligerent music of the male generals’ camp. Lucretia sings of missing her beloved husband Collatinus and laments his being called away to battle. In the role of Lucretia, mezzo-soprano Natalie Lewis sang beautifully, displaying her impressive range and coloration. As the ageing Bianca, Lucretia’s lifelong nurse, mezzo-soprano Simona Genga was excellent; and as Lucia, soprano Olivia Prendergast was a pert, bright-voiced young attendant to Lucretia. 

When Tarquinius arrives unannounced, Lucretia is alarmed but is obliged to grant him hospitality, since he claims his horse is lame. The women show Tarquinius to a room where he can spend the night, then the household retires. During the night, when the women are asleep, Tarquinius slips into Lucretia’s bedroom intent on seducing her. When Lucretia refuses his advances, he forcibly rapes her, though she fights him off as best she can, only to be overcome by male force. Director Jan Essinger indicated in the post-performance discussion on Saturday that the production team felt it was important to not show Lucretia passively submitting to male sexual violence, but instead physically putting up a fight against this aggressive attack. I laud this decision. Moreover, although in other stagings the actual rape is not seen but heard only in an orchestral interlude, 

I found it far more powerful to have the very physical violence of the rape seen as well as heard in the music. 

The next morning, after Tarquinius has ridden away, Lucretia summons Lucia to send for Collatinus. When he arrives, Lucretia sorrowfully informs him, accompanied by cor anglais and strings, of what Tarquinius did to her during the night. Collatinus tries to comfort her, but in her distress Lucretia stabs herself, dying in her husband’s arms. At this point, as all the living protagonists and the male and female chorus sing of this tragedy, director Jan Essinger inexplicably causes all the furniture in Lucretia’s house to levitate. When I asked him in the post-performance discussion why he did this, he replied that they wished to show somehow that this world was upside down, topsy-turvy, and torn apart. Nonetheless, I found this bit of staging gratuitous and even annoying. Likewise, Britten’s attempt to tack onto the ending of this opera a message of Christian redemption through Jesus Christ struck me as wrongheadedly anachronistic and unwelcome in a story set in pagan times 500 years before the birth of Christ. Finally, I should note the excellent conducting of Britten’s score by Judith Yan, who pointed out in the post-performance discussion that it is far more difficult and demanding to conduct a small chamber orchestra of 14 instrumentalists than to conduct an orchestra of 70 or so. Both Judith Yan and the Merola Orchestra rose beautifully to this challenge.