The Rape of Lucretia

Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia has never been staged in Russia, so this production is a new stage for us.

“It is our responsibility to ensure that Britten’s work is adequately presented today and has an adequate response from the public. It is simply impossible to sound this music, because it was originally written as a protest opera, as a reaction to the events of World War II. Artists exist in the performance in a completely different manner, aesthetics, than in the operas of Russian and Italian composers. But Britten music truly amazes... We refused to illustrate the text, and invented our own story. In the first version of the concert performance, the Russian text sounded, in the second – English. In the stage version, they settled on the English version. Firstly, the poetic beauty of the opera is conveyed. Secondly, I needed a tough documentary text without operatic beauty, which is present in the original. Britten wrote the opera, counting on a very definite time, the viewer, the theater troupe, which could not be huge in the post-war period. The Rape of Lucretia is a document of the era, a child of its time. My performance is a product of our time. Very unstable, restless...

The story of Lucretia is tragic, but I focused on the cruel world in which Lucretia lived, Britten lived and today we live. We got into the habit of watching creepy things that are shown every day on TV, and at the same time, we calmly sit at home on the couch, drinking tea or coffee. I do not want this performance to become such an occasion, I wanted to kick this topic up, to humanize it. This is how two characters appeared – He and She, who, in fact, expressing our position and attitude. My task as a stage director was to somehow try to counteract with them, to actively survive. In the opera, they are designated as male and female chorus, outside observers, in my performance – these are the main characters. The performance begins with their appearance, and the last word remains with them. This is an eternal dialogue between a Man and a Woman about love, devotion, betrayal. In the working version, I called them Adam and Eve. They are like two stalkers leading us into a story that repeats itself at every turn – the same cruelty, violence, loneliness, barbarity ... I deliberately placed these characters in the hall so that the audience would experience this story with us.”

Yuri Alexandrov