The renowned contemporary music ensemble based in Vienna, Klangforum Wien, along with eight singers, gave a spectacular concert performance of Benjamin Britten’s first chamber opera at the Wiener Konzerthaus tonight. In The Rape of Lucretia, Britten’s skilled, economical orchestration elicits a vast spectrum of colors, ranging from the most intimate sonorities from the strings and harp, to a full-fledged fusillade when necessary---like the suicide of Lucretia, who is overcome with shame.
The opera functions as a parable, a reflection that mankind invariably destroys virtue and beauty. The opera Britten had a knack for selecting gifted librettists. Ronald Duncan based his libretto, in verse form, on the play, “Le viol de Lucrèce” by André Obey. Here are some quotes of lines that I found especially striking:
“Home is what man leaves to seek. What is home but women?”
“Oh Christ heal our blindness which we mistake for sight,
And show us your day for ours is endless night.”
“So will my pretty vase enclose
The sun’s extravagance
which is the rose.”
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