Who was Lucretia and did she change history?
A myth or a historical story? Either way, it goes back to antiquity.
Wiki tells Lucretia’s story, and the historical accounts of it, here. Here's Tom's version.
Mythical, like the two different tales of Rome’s foundation in 753 BCE (Aeneas vs Romulus & Remus), this legend gives a moral and heroic justification for the overthrow of the Etruscan kings who ruled Rome from its legendary foundation in 753 BCE to the equally legendary founding of the Republic 250 years later. Rome at that time was a town of only 35,000 (think Warrnambool) and there are no written records of these events.
The three generals (Prince Tarquinius, Lucius Junius Brutus , and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus) in the opening of the opera – which mainly follows Livy’s account written half a millennium later— were all of the Tarquin clan who ruled Rome and nearby towns. Away on campaign, they quarreled over their wives’ fidelity, ducked home to Rome to check up, and only Collatinus’s wife Lucretia was faithful. Then events unfolded much as in the opera, with the son of the ruling (and of course tyrannical) king Tarquin the Proud, doing the foul deed. Horrified at the rape and her subsequent noble suicide as befitting a proud Roman matron, Collatinus swears with Brutus to drive the Tarquins from Rome, a revolutionary committee is formed, an election to form a republic was held, and the kings are kicked out – all in one day while Lucretia’s body lay on display in the Forum.
At her suicide the writer Dio has her saying "And, whereas I (for I am a woman) shall act in a manner which is fitting for me: you, if you are men, and if you care for your wives and children, exact vengeance on my behalf and free your selves and show the tyrants what sort of woman they outraged, and what sort of men were her menfolk!" The legend is thought to have aimed to justify revolution by the moral horror of sexual assault against women, and to show the moral superiority of Romans over the rest.. Brutus and Collatinus became, of course, the first two Consuls of the Republic.
This story is much celebrated in literature and art, with a variety of interpretations, but Lucretia always chaste, and her suicide required by her honour. Livy’s Roman civic history; Ovid’s lures of the emotions; and Chaucer’s Lucrece all present the story of the exemplary, loyal wife. And in all versions, by processes not very clearly explored, her rape precipitated the end of the monarchy of the Tarquins, and beginning of the Roman Republic.
Not just an opera
The legend has a long history of brilliant paintings by old masters, probably one of the most frequently featured rapes in galleries.Titian was over eighty by the time Tarquin and Lucretia (above) was completed in 1571, 'which makes the work's sheer vitality all the more remarkable. For this is not the work of a frail old man, but that of a vigorous storyteller, a visual poet at the height of his powers'. More here.
Rubens' famous painting (intriguingly similarly posed, but featuring a cherub) followed in 1610. (Right)
And between these came Shakespeare’s poem, published in 1594 and dedicated to his patron, Earl of Southhampton. It's a formidable text of 1,855 lines, in iambic pentameter, divided into 265 stanzas, of seven lines each. Details here of the analysis in recent years. Full poem is here.
‘Shakespeare broadened, deepened, and updated the known outlines of the story, selecting and expanding what he needed to fit the stylistic and thematic needs of the poem and the expectations of its readers. The result is a profoundly thoughtful poem, exploring the psyches of both villain and victim in greater depth and concentration than even his experience in the theatre had yet allowed.’
The legend features frequently in literature’s debates about ‘narratives of rape’ - women’s powerlessness and men’s misuse of them, and the rulings of Christianity.
Britten’s version
As Britten moved towards small scale, chamber opera, why did he choose this subject?
There’s a splendid background piece here from the Red House, home of the Britten-Pears Foundation. It explores the pleasure and excitement of a small friendship group creating this small, intense opera in the austerity of 1946. Kathleen Ferrier (below) was the first Lucretia.
Britten’s librettist, the poet Ronald Duncan, embellishes the classical story with characters fleshed out in the simple small scale piece, by presenting the coarse comments of the commanders on the battlefield as cause or at least catalyst to Tarquinius’ action, and the gentle world of the women, folding linen.
As this review comments, the music takes us into those two worlds:
'With the roles of the Male and Female Chorus, who comment on the action ‘out of time’ (as in Greek tragedy) and the use of solo piano accompaniment to accompany recitative passages, Lucretia achieves a certain ‘classical’ poise and detachment. However, Lucretia and Tarquinius are flesh-and-blood characters driven by real human emotions and desires (Lucretia’s music is surely some of Britten’s most sheerly beautiful) and the resulting amalgam is an opera of great musico-dramatic power and expressive richness.'
The opera is narrated by two singers taking the roles of male and female chorus, and altogether has only eight singers accompanied by a chamber ensemble. This is a much more intense and intimate style of performance than anything Britten had produced previously, and sometimes listed as the first English chamber opera.
Lucretia was a success in terms of number of performances, though financially disastrous and winning mixes reviews. It never became a mainstay of opera companies - and it's interesting to ask why. Britten’s biographer Neil Powell offers this intriguing reflection:
Lucretia is a mass of paradoxes. It is a piece in which Britten’s scoring is more subtly nuanced than ever before – the woodwind colours are especially beguiling – and one which does indeed reinvent the form of the chamber opera. Yet it tends to win admirers rather than friends. It has flaws, for which Duncan usually takes most of the blame: it is too literary and too static… and it is encumbered by an anachronistic Christian epilogue, which Britten seems to have thought would mitigate its excessive bleakness (a consideration which hadn’t seemed to bother him with Grimes.) The Male Chorus neatly solves the problem of providing a role for Pears which doesn't cast him as a heterosexual Roman; the danger is that we may sense this neatness and, with it, the extent to which Britten too has stepped to one side of the action. His heart, we may feel, isn't in Lucretia as it was in Grimes and yet - one last paradox - that detachment might in part account for the inventive fluency of his music."(Benjamin Britten: a Life for Music, p.250)
Our production
The version we are showing was recorded in Aldeburgh, a joint production with ENO, in 2001. Paul Daniel (conductor) & David McVicar (stage director).
Sarah Connolly sings Lucretia and Christopher Maltman is Tarquinius. Full cast here. Cast members all were praised in all reviews: see this one in particular for detail.
This review comments how McVicar presents ‘the contrasting energies of the two worlds of the drama. The opening scene in the soldiers’ camp really emphasises the macho nature of this male world - you can almost smell the sweat and testosterone. In the context of this world of dangerous male bonding it is unsurprising that Tarquinius’ lustful passions are given full rein to develop. In contrast, the domestic world of the women is simple and homely, and more brightly coloured through the ladies’ costumes. The domestic chores, such as the folding of the linen or the flower arranging, stand for a kind of innocence and simplicity that is remarkable in its contrast to the soldiers’ camp. Tarquinius’ intrusion into this world can only end in disaster.’
And those two chorus voices are riveting: the male beautifully sung by John Mark Ainsley and Orla Boylan sings the female role feelingly, her character bonding to Lucretia, (McVicar ignoring Britten’s instruction that the choruses play no part in the drama). 'McVicar’s big idea is to have them interacting invisibly with the rest of the cast. This turns them into a psychological commentary on the unfolding story and adds an extra layer of depth that you don’t get from a purely audio recording.’
Britten's problem piece?
Surprisingly, among the reviews there are few critiques of Britten's use of the legend.
Tim Ashley in the Guardian argues, 'Britten's take on this narrative is suspect. He sees rape as being primarily about sex rather than violence, and it is unclear whether he portrays Lucretia as "asking for it". The libretto also falls short of expressing outrage. Fury, voiced by the two-faced Junius, is swallowed up in the opera's final swerve towards the contemplation of Christ's Passion as the supreme solace for human misery.'
In a second review he calls it 'Britten's problem piece.' Read here his description of the radical Glydebourne production in 2013. Another time...
I found more reflection on Britten's presentation of gender roles in a review of an Oxford performance. Listen to the music, this review argues, for the issues of this opera. It highlights the beautiful 'Good Night' sextet that shimmers over the tragic invasion of Tarquinius to the women's world.
'Throughout the whole sextet, Lucretia has only one short solo line. Despite the centrality of her character, she is given little agency, and has surprisingly few solo moments. As the only character to have a distinctive leitmotif associated with her name, her identity is fixed in a manner beyond her control. Similarly, her whole being is associated with the label of “chaste”. A key aspect of her selfhood is lost when she can no longer personify the idea of “pure love”that she and others associate with herself. Furthermore, when Lucia sings her goodnight, she is interrupted by the Male Chorus, who narrates Tarquinius’s actions. Musically, Tarquinius overpowers Lucia in the same way that he will later physically overpower Lucretia. While this could be put down to characterisation alone, it is a persistent problem that throughout the opera, the men are given more differentiated musical material than the women. Women are generalised by both text and score, and it is unclear whether Britten and Duncan are subscribing to gender stereotypes, or exposing them for critique. It all depends on the staging.'
For contrast, imagine the staging described here from a recent local production.