OPERA REVIEW : Bold New Look at Britten’s ‘Lucretia’

It might be argued that the Long Beach Opera has raped “The Rape of Lucretia.”

Benjamin Britten’s second major music drama, completed in 1946, explores the universal agonies of dishonor and destruction. Nevertheless, it sustains the virtues of classical poise and intimate restraint.

Ronald Duncan’s rather polite libretto--based on a play by Andre Obey and inspired by Shakespeare, Livy and Ovid--savors elegant verse. Britten’s transparent score, utilizing a cast of eight and an orchestra of 13, harks back to Baroque convention. Even when violence beckons, the expressive scale remains muted, the tone pervasively lyrical.

Christopher Alden, who staged the ultra-modern version introduced at the Center Theater on Sunday, doesn’t care much about Britten’s fine British understatement. Reverence for a composer’s intentions has never been this director’s forte.

Ever brash and often insightful, Alden deals in basics. According to the program booklet, the action takes place in Rome during the 6th Century, BC. Forget all that.

For a stage, Alden asked his designing accomplice, Peter Harrison, to provide nothing more than a raked white wedge flanked by a huge white wall. A timeless message is scrawled on the wall: “ALL TYRANTS FALL THOUGH TYRANNY PERSISTS.”

The characters, generally overwrought, move in stylized isolation on this stark platform. Leslie Brown has dressed them in grim contemporary costumes, mostly black. The men’s partial uniforms hint, perhaps, at Fascist Italy. Lucretia wears a Rita Hayworth negligee to bed, but greets the dawn of disgrace wrapped in a white sheet, her hair dripping. For her suicide, she emerges in a scarlet cocktail dress.

The symbolism isn’t subtle.

Alden ignores the rhetorical distinctions that traditionally separate the Male and Female Chorus--individual characters--from the participants in the tragedy. The erstwhile Grecian commentators function here as primary protagonists, stalking the runway, pawing each other and cowering against the wall as they mirror the passions they describe.

The milieu is uncompromisingly stark, even in the scenes of domestic innocence. Where Britten deals in delicate degrees of light and shade, Alden concentrates on shade alone. The dark is never dark enough.

He permits no descriptive decors. The set changes only as Robert Sternberg adjusts the mood with a strikingly fluid array of lighting effects. The only props on the stage are a candle, a dagger, and pile of red blossoms scattered on the floor by Tarquinius in an act of ironic insult after the rape.

Alden’s purpose, of course, is to make the message universal. Unfortunately, he has not clarified the narrative in the process.

Unless one has studied the libretto, his bleak rituals must confuse more than they enlighten. Moreover, his political, psychological and sociological interpolations sometimes stretch the text beyond the point of accommodation.

Those who recall the last professional production of “The Rape of Lucretia” in Southern California--Gunther Rennert’s subtle staging for the Metropolitan National Company in 1967--know that the opera can make its impact poignantly without the benefit of trendy updating. Still, one has to admire Alden’s daring.

One also has to applaud the theatrical integrity of his vision. “The Rape of Lucretia” does gain immediacy on his uncompromisingly barren stage. The impeccably choreographed rituals convey a raw emotional appeal that often enhances, sometimes even magnifies, the dynamic pulse of the score.

And the score is sensitively served by all concerned. Steven Sloane conducts with precision that never inhibits dramatic tension. The cast assembled by Michael Milenski represents a perfectly balanced ensemble of singing actors who are not afraid of taking risks.

Katherine Ciesinski defines the contradictions of Lucretia’s character--erotic vulnerability, heroic defiance, stoic surrender--with pathetic honesty, and sings with mezzo-soprano fervor that bears comparison with such models as Kathleen Ferrier and Janet Baker. Roy Stevens conveys both the pride and the lust of Tarquinius with hysterical intensity.

The exquisite spinning scene is illuminated by the limpid coloratura of J.J. Leeds as Lucia, complemented by the dark contralto of Martha Jane Howe as Bianca. Brian Matthews conveys the compassion of Collatinus with manly force, and Robin Buck is a gutsy Junius.

James Schwisow convincingly stresses mortal torment as the Male Chorus, without allowing one to forget the godly finesse of Peter Pears, for whom the role was written. As the Female Chorus, Gwynne Geyer traces the arching vocal line with fresh spinto sheen inflected with canny histrionic insinuation.

The performance is disturbing and unsettling. It is overwhelmingly theatrical, even when it is interpretively perverse. It is provocative in the best sense.

Long Beach Opera is back on the track.