The following photos are courtesy of the University of Arizona Opera Theater. ©
The University of Arizona Opera Theater with the Arizona Symphony Chamber Ensemble
Charles Roe, artistic director – Jackson Warren, music director
Friday, November 19 and Sunday, November 21, 2010 in Crowder Hall
The cast for Albert Herring
Three new productions of Benjamin Britten’s opera Albert Herring have been mounted around the US in 2010: The Butler Opera Center at the University of Texas in March, Lorin Maazel’s first Castleton Festival in Virginia in July and the much-praised one at Santa Fe Opera in August. Now Director Charles Roe, at the U of A, has thrown his Herring hat into the ring. What he came up with was a kind of easy-going, humorous approach which worked very well for his cast.*
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Lucretia-Robyn Rocklein, Tarquinius-Seth Kershinik
Sometimes an opera will reveal its artistic nature in a way the listener had not expected. That is what happened at the Opera Theater’s April 3rd performance of Benjamin Britten’s Rape of Lucretia. Composed after the success of his thoroughly orchestrated Peter Grimes, Britten chose to make his Lucretia a two-act chamber opera, with 13 instrumentalists and eight singers. Librettist, Ronald Duncan used Andre Obey’s play Le voil de Lucrèce in telling the tale of Lucretia — the wife of Collatinus, a Roman general — who is raped by Prince Tarquinius, son of the Etruscan tyrant, Tarquinius Superbus. Junius, another Roman general who is jealous of Lucretia’s devotion to her husband and who has aspirations to rule Rome, underhandedly encourages Tarquinius to go to Collatinus’ house in the dead of night to seduce the chaste Lucretia. The opera, which is set in Rome in 500 BC, presents two difficult artistic challenges in its quest to succeed as drama.
Director Charles Roe and Music Director and Conductor Thomas Cockrell had to find a way to keep Britten’s musical pathos flowing at those moments when Duncan’s text became turgid and unresponsive to the story. In addition, Britten decided to mix Christian beliefs with Roman creed throughout the opera, the two contrary views showing up at unexpected intervals. Roe and Cockrell overcame these literary difficulties by concentrating on the emotional and musical aspects of the opera, deflating what was cumbersome in the text, thus allowing the dramatic impact of Lucretia’s plight to be fully realized.
With only a chamber orchestra in the pit, the singers performed the demands of the piece with vocal confidence and dramatic security fulfilling Roe and Cockrell’s artistic intentions.
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Nick del Vecchio, the chief contributor to Living at the Opera, has been an avid operagoer since the age of eight, has taught opera courses on Verdi, Puccini and Mozart in Philadelphia and Tucson, AZ, sponsored singers’ evenings for local organizations, and has written opera reviews and commentary on his extensive travels in Italy, Russia and throughout
North and South America.
Email: nick at livingattheopera (dot) com
Peggy Erhardt-Gray
is the editor of Living at the Opera.
Marisa Dominguez
is the web designer for Living at the Opera.
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