This specially-staged studio recording of the English National Opera’s highly-acclaimed production of Benjamin Britten’s work features outstanding performances by Jean Rigby as Lucretia and Richard Van Allan as Collatinus. Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Kathryn Harries sing the Male and Female Chorus who poignantly comment on the brutal rape of Lucretia by Tarquinius, Prince of Rome. With its bare scrubbed boards, its sliding screens – against which the characters sometimes appear in silhouette – and its high-railed gantry from which the Chorus observe, both Graham Vick’s staging and Russell Craig’s severe designs have a cool, elegant simplicity. With no extraneous movement or gesture to distract the eye, everything is focused with a luminous intensity on the ritualistically compact unfolding of the drama and the inescapable fate of her characters. This ascetic production tellingly matches the austere restraint of Britten’s first chamber opera, scored with sparse texture for a mere twelve instruments, a limitation over which Britten triumphed to produce music of deeply moving intensity. This innovative production is a fine example of the exciting and imaginative work that is characteristic of the English National Opera.
