The Rape of Lucretia in Alexander Theatre, the 28th of March, 2018

Opera Box has now brought to stage a bit newer opera; Benjamin Britten’s ”The Rape of Lucretia”. The opera takes place in ancient Rome. Roman generals, who are fighting in a war against Greece, have been detected that their wives have taken lovers in their absence. The exception is Lucretia, wife of general Collatinus, who is faithful to her husband. This irritates another general – Junius -, who prods the Etruscan prince Tarquinius to seduce Lucretia. When he does not succeed in the seduction, he rapes Lucretia and she commits suicide out of shame.

Unfortunately the opera is still topical. Rape is even today used all over the world as a way to shame a woman and/or her family/tribe/nation and in many communities it is the woman who is judged and death is considered to be the only way to wash away the shame.

Britten’s opera has a bit unusual construction, since the story has two storytellers (a man and a woman), who tell the background of the story and comment on what happens on the stage. The male storyteller Lasse Penttinen was not quite up to the task vocally and the running around and dramatic anxiety of the female storyteller (Hedvig Paulig) also disturbed me. Though she did sing very well. The weirdest part of their role was the peculiar Christian pathos of the libretto. The opera is, of course, from the 1940’s, but I still did not quite understand what these ramblings had to do with the story.

The soloists were well chosen. My favourite was Riku Pelo as Junius, but I also like Liisa Viinanen as Lucretia very much. Chamber orchestra Ariadne performed beautifully as well. Britten’s music was occasionally really sparse, but it sounded great.

This time there were no video projections or dancers in the opera like so many times in Ville Saukkonen’s directions. And the set design did not contain any boxes, either, but it was based in cloths. Most of the time the stage was really bare, but it actually suited this work. And costume design was superb. Hanna Hakkarainen was responsible for both the set and costume designs.