In collaboration with the Royal Opera House and Britten Pears Arts, we perform in Britten’s shattering chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia.
In a world brutalised by conflict, one woman’s experience of horrific violence becomes the defining moment of an era. Benjamin Britten’s shattering chamber opera explores some of the darkest drives in the human psyche – and what happens when power and war give them free rein. In this contemporary new staging at the Linbury Theatre we collaborate with the Royal Opera House as Oliver Mears directs, while Corinna Niemeyer conducts a cast drawn from the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme and the Jette Parker Artists Programme.
“The Rape of Lucretia is a tense, troubled and dangerous opera – one of Britten’s finest. The responsibility towards the piece and its traumatic subject matter makes it a daunting opera for any creative team. But by finding its deepest, most innermost resonances (with Britten’s own life as well as with the apocalyptic circumstances of his time – and ours) we will, we hope, allow it to speak with unbearable power for audiences for now.”
Oliver Mears, director of the production and Director of The Royal Opera