The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta. Michael White
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Название: The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta

Автор: Michael White

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Музыка, балет

Серия:

isbn: 9780008299538

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СКАЧАТЬ III Grimes seems to have disappeared and the boy’s sweater has been found on the beach. Hysteria and suspicion dominate the atmosphere and a full-scale manhunt is launched. But it is Ellen and Balstrode who find the half-demented Grimes. Ellen wants to take him home but Balstrode advises him that he has no alternative but to take his boat out to sea and sink it. Grimes accepts the inevitable.

       Music and Background

      This is the opera that put Britten, and British opera, on the map; and it remains the most popular work in the composer’s stage catalogue. Using a big orchestra with Verdian force, and sometimes methods, it has all the ingredients of traditional grand opera (including a Mad Scene) recast in 20th-century terms. The chorus scenes can be electrifying, the central role (one of the great tenor parts of modern times) a fascinatingly ambivalent synthesis of lyric beauty and brute force, and there is a memorable sequence of ‘sea interludes’ which function as orchestral entr’actes but also, in the manner of Berg’s Wozzeck, chart Grimes’ descent into mental breakdown.

       Highlights

      The storm interlude and Grimes’ unnerving one-note soliloquy ‘Now the Great Bear and Pleiades’ in Act I. Ellen’s radiant and archetypally Brittenesque aria ‘Glitter of waves’, the manhunt chorus ‘Now is gossip put on trial’ and orchestral passacaglia in Act II. The second manhunt, with its devastating chorus cries of Peter’s name, and Grimes’ Mad Scene in Act III.

      Did You Know?

      

Peter Grimes is the product of homesickness. The setting is Aldeburgh, close to where Britten had been brought up, but he took the idea for the opera from a magazine item on George Crabbe that he read while he was living in America. The article was by E.M. Forster, and it began: ‘To think of Crabbe is to think of England’.

      Recommended Recording

      Peter Pears, Claire Watson, Geraint Evans, Royal Opera, Covent Garden/Benjamin Britten. Decca 414 577-2. Made in 1958 and now with a number of rival versions, including Jon Vickers in the title role for Philips, but still without equal.

       FORM: Opera in two acts; in English

       COMPOSER: Benjamin Britten (1913–76)

       LIBRETTO: Ronald Duncan; after André Obey’s play, itself based on Livy and Shakespeare

       FIRST PERFORMANCE: Glyndebourne, 12 July 1946

       Principal Characters

      Lucretia, Collatinus’ wife

Mezzo-soprano

      Collatinus

Bass

      Tarquinius, ruler of Rome

Baritone

      Junius

Baritone

      Male Chorus

Tenor

      Female Chorus

Mezzo-soprano

       Synopsis of the Plot

      Setting: Rome; 510 BC

      ACT I In the army camp Tarquinius, Collatinus and Junius are drinking steadily and complaining about the general untrustworthiness of women, with the exception of Collatinus’ wife, Lucretia, who is known to be absolutely and unshakeably faithful. This assertion provokes Tarquinius, who rides furiously to Rome with the sole intention of destroying Lucretia’s reputation. When Tarquinius arrives at her home, Lucretia welcomes him, rather uneasily, and offers him hospitality.

      ACT II Tarquinius creeps into Lucretia’s room and she, sleepily imagining it to be her husband, responds to him before realising the truth and struggling, in vain, to prevent him from raping her. The next day Lucretia sends for Collatinus, who quickly learns the truth from her attendants. Collatinus reassures his wife of his love for her but Lucretia’s shame is too great for her to bear and she stabs herself to death.

       Music and Background

      The Rape of Lucretia followed Peter Grimes in Britten’s output but was written for far more modest resources – eight voices and a chamber ensemble of thirteen instruments – which reflect a concern for the practical problems of getting opera onto the stage in the years of austerity immediately after the Second World War. The tone of the writing is itself austere, stiff with an emotional restraint that limits the opera’s popularity. But the brilliance with which Britten draws from these small resources ingenious effects like the opening evocation of a sultry Italian night – complete with bullfrogs and cicadas – is undeniable, and the vividness of this sound-painting more than compensates for moments of monochrome dryness elsewhere.

       Highlights

      The Male Chorus account of Tarquinius’ night-ride in Act I is tense with excitement. In Act II the most purely beautiful music comes, oddly perhaps, as Tarquinius steals upon the sleeping Lucretia, singing ‘Within this frail crucible of light’.

      Did You Know?

      

The lingering logistical problem with The Rape of Lucretia is why a devoted wife who has been violated against her will should feel any guilt. Stage directors tend to address the issue by implying that she harbours hitherto unrealised desires for Tarquinius – although this doesn’t endear their productions to feminist commentators.

      Recommended Recording

      Janet Baker, Peter Pears, Heather Harper, English Chamber Orchestra/Benjamin Britten. Decca 425 666-2. Discs that captured Janet Baker on peak form in 1970, with singing of depth and dignity.

       FORM: Opera in a Prologue and two acts; in English

       COMPOSER: Benjamin Britten (1913–76)

       СКАЧАТЬ