The Rape of Lucretia by Britten, Dom 20 Méit 2021, Ó (2021/2021), Faoi stiúir Johannes Reitmeier, Seoltóir Kerem Hasan, Tiroler Landestheater, Innsbruck, Austria

Benjamin Britten is regarded as England's most important composer and as the founder of a new operatic tradition in his homeland. His personal style is characterized by the brilliant combination of very different musical directions, to which he gave his own characteristic touch. Not infrequently, his works tended to have a smaller cast - as did his 1946 opera The Rape of Lucretia , which with twelve orchestral musicians is perfect for the chamber plays of the Tiroler Landestheater in the Haus der Musik Innsbruck. In his much-performed work, Britten quotes early Baroque music and pays tribute to the great Henry Purcell. The focus of the plot, which goes back to a Roman tradition from the 6th century BC, is Lucretia, the wife of the general Collatinus. Equally famous for her beauty as for her virtue, she is raped by the tyrant's son Sextus Tarquinius and then commits suicide. In art history, Lucretia can be found as the title heroine of countless works with the motif of marital fidelity and violated chastity. For director Johannes Reitmeier it is the second encounter with the work that he staged for the first time around three decades ago. Even great love's too frail to bear the weight of shadows. No I'll be forever chaste, with only death to ravish me. See how my wanton blood washes my shame away. Lucretia