The Rape of Lucretia is a tragic tale through the ages

Opera director Michael Barker Caven tells Colette Sheridan how The Rape of Lucretia still has much to say about sexual violence in war.

BENJAMIN Britten’s opera, The Rape of Lucretia, has been given a thoroughly contemporary makeover by Michael Barker-Caven. He is directing the Irish Youth Opera in association with Wexford Festival Opera in a production that opened in Wexford on Saturday and begins its run in Cork tomorrow. The opera is set in a television studio with a cast of eight — including a man and a woman representing the male and female choruses.

“The two chorus members become news presenters on an evangelical news programme where news and religion are mixed,” says Barker-Caven. He says the opera has much resonance for today. “In a lot of international news, media, news desks and the Bible have somehow become intertwined in various locations around the world. What is the influence of that?”

Based on Shakespeare’s long poem and set in ancient Rome, it’s about the events that lead up to the rape of Lucretia, wife of a senior Roman general, and the aftermath of the brutal act which includes the demise of the victim by her own hand.

“This ancient story was an incredibly important underlying source myth for the entire birth of the Roman Republic, for the idea of justice and for confronting the abuse of state power. We wanted to find a way of bringing this remarkable work to life in a completely contemporary way. It’s set against the backdrop of a never-ending state of war. There’s a sense of countries at war with each other, left, right and centre. In the middle, people are trying to hold onto their humanity but there is a shifting of the moral goalposts that enables a rape to be buried and hidden and then turned to political advantage.”

The story is about Tarquinius, Collatinus and Junius drinking together in an armed camp outside Rome. The men’s wives, apart from that of Collatinus, were caught betraying their husbands. When this is reported, Junius goads the king’s son, Tarquin, to test Lucreita’s chastity himself. He awakens her from sleep, thinks she desires him and rapes her. Lucretia, feeling violated and unclean, kills herself. Junius plans to use this crime by the prince to spark a rebellion against the king.

“All the things that hold a civilisation together are abused by the rape. In a sense, doing this opera is a way of bringing something very old up to date because history never stops repeating itself. Like all great art, this opera is about that cycle of repetition and how we continue to fail to learn from history.”

Lucretia, sung by Carolyn Dobbin, becomes in some sense, everywoman. “She is symbolic of all women’s experience at the hands of a violent oppressor. All war is about rape. The oppression in the home is no different on a micro level to the oppression that builds up to the stage when a country goes to war. Rape has always been used as a metaphor for that terrible state of being and women are the ones who, historically, have always suffered the most from it.”

The Rape of Lucretia is the inaugural production from the Irish Youth Opera, formed over the last 12 months.

“It will showcase the very best of emerging opera talent. The members of Irish Youth Opera are trained professionals who are carrying the weight of expectation of a main stage production. It’s a hugely exciting development,” enthuses Barker-Caven.

The Rape of Lucretia is at Cork’s Everyman for one night only tomorrow. It’s at the O’Reilly Theatre in Dublin on September 11-12.