Dicapo in the News

Opera News Review
The Rape of Lucretia

Paul J. Pelkonen
Opera News, May, 2001

To solve the dramatic problems of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, DiCapo Opera moved the action to a New York rehearsal studio, creating a "picture-in-a-picture" perspective to draw the viewer into ancient Rome by starting in a contemporary spot. The cast began in street clothes. Joseph Baunoch (Junius) wore a Colorado Avalanche hockey sweater; Zan McKendree-Wright (Bianca) was in bondage cuffs and collar and a black sleeveless T-shirt. Then the Chorus (James Higginbotham and Allison Keil) rose slowly and began the Prologue, singing slow, majestic music followed by rapid exposition, to piano accompaniment. Higginbotham has a sharp-edged, versatile chest voice, which he combines with an unearthly countertenor effect, using his head-voice alone to displace himself from the action. Keil's is an impassioned soprano and a good foil to Higginbotham.

As the action progressed, the singers would move to a costume rack and don military uniforms, maid's outfits -- what have you. The first to do so were Roman soldiers Tarquinius (the rapist, played by Gary Lehman), Collatinus (Lucretia's husband, played by Craig Hart) and Junius (played by Baunoch, sans hockey sweater), who donned military greatcoats over their street clothes. Lehman's good-sized, dark baritone downshifted to a hissing whisper to portray Tarquinius's lust for Lucretia. Craig Hart's big, black bass was the keystone of the cast.

Lucretia makes a late entrance in her own story, but the rich, smooth mezzo of Lori Brown-Mirabal was worth the wait. This short role runs the gamut of serenity, passion, shame, hysteria and suicidal despair, emotions presented convincingly. The gravitas of Mirabal's stage presence befitted a patrician housewife -- and of all the singers, she stayed most in character, no matter what she was wearing.

As her attendants, Shannah Timms and McKendree Wright were exemplary. Their ironic, post-rape Act II duet, in which they praised the beautiful morning while arranging "flowers" (ripped-out pages of a recent OPERA NEWS), was smoothly sung, one of the evening's real aural pleasures.

The two big dramatic scenes of Act II -- the rape and its aftermath, in which a disgraced Lucretia kills herself -- were the evening's theatrical highlights. The rape was brutally staged atop a table, all the more effective since a bedsheet was held up to prevent the audience from seeing the horrific action. And the confession -- in which Hart and Mirabal rose to tragic heights -- was equally disturbing, thanks to Hart's incomprehension and Mirabal's resolve.

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