Political resonances & sheer poetry: Robin Norton-Hale's new production of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia shows English Touring Opera on strong form

Britten: The Rape of Lucretia - Jenny Stafford, William Morgan - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Britten: The Rape of Lucretia; Clare Presland, William Morgan, Jenny Stafford, Kieran Rayner, Rosie Lomas, Edmund Danon, Jane Monari, Trevor Eliot Bowes, director: Robin Norton-Hale, conductor Gerry Cornelius, English Touring Opera; Hackney Empire
Reviewed 4 October 2025

A stripped back production seemed to barely put a foot wrong, bringing out the resonances of the text yet never over-emphasising and providing a strong framework for a terrific ensemble of singers

English Touring Opera's Autumn season continued its theme of strong women and unreliable men by following the fun of Donizetti's The Elixir of Love with something far darker, Britten's The Rape of Lucretia at the Hackney Empire on 4 October 2025. Directed by the company's artistic director, Robin Norton-Hale and conducted by music director Gerry Cornelius, the new production of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia was designed by Eleanor Bull with lighting by Jamie Platt and movement by Rebecca Meltzer. Clare Presland was Lucretia with Jenny Stafford as female chorus, William Morgan as male chorus, Kieran Rayner as Tarquinius, Rosie Lomas as Lucia, Edmund Danon as Junius, Jane Monari as Bianca and Trevor Eliot Bowes as Collatinus.

Robin Norton-Hale and designer Eleanor Bull set the piece in a loose present, a country at war, though Bull's costume designs had an element of classical simplicity to them as well. Norton-Hale had clearly been interested in bringing out the work's political resonances and the libretto's use of war for political purposes along with the elements of nationalism - 'Rome for the Romans'! What was illuminating was to realise how much of this was in the libretto, written shortly after the conclusion of the Second World War. Norton-Hale did not have to do much to highlight these elements.

Britten: The Rape of Lucretia - Clare Presland, Trevor Eliot Bowes - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

But there was another strain to the performance too. From William Morgan's opening words as male chorus, what struck me (and other audience members I talked to) was the sense of the poetic in Ronald Duncan's much derided libretto. Morgan's diction was superb and this was followed by that of the other singers, and all gave us a sense that the words were poetic, stylised perhaps, and memorable in their own right.

The opera opened and closed with a wall, in front of which Morgan's male chorus and Jenny Stafford's female chorus sang to us. The wall featured a flower and candle shrine (to Lucretia as we discovered at the end), whilst Act Two opened with the wall and a slogan. We could have been anywhere, and it was clear that Morgan and Stafford were going to be very partial observers.

For the action proper, the wall parted to reveal a pile of stones that created a quasi-amphitheatre where the soldiers had their encampment and then the women surrounded Lucretia's bed. There were some telling details - Tarquinius' knife used by Lucretia for her suicide, the wreath that Lucretia makes become part of the shrine. But this was not a fussy production, Norton-Hall was interested in the characters and their moral actions rather than worrying about world creation. The whole had a stripped-back sense to it, a sense of focus, that works well with this opera, particular when presented with such fine performances as this.

Britten: The Rape of Lucretia - Kieran Rayner, Edmund Danon - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

From his first words, the male chorus of William Morgan was superb. He projected Britten's music and Duncan's words with a sense of involvement in both the music and the poetry. Morgan sang with enviable line along with superb diction, yet more than this he seemed to embody the strange conflicted character that is the male chorus. Almost part of the action in the first scene. There was a campness to the character, a feeling that this was a gay man observing in the way that Britten did, yet in the first scene Morgan's putting on of beret to match that of the soldiers was telling.

Jenny Stafford made the female chorus a similarly complex creation. Fully in sympathy with the Roman women, she mixed sympathy with a clear knowledge of what was going to happen. At the opening of Act Two, Stafford and Morgan's interaction made it clear that they had no sympathy for the political posturing that was being described, yet the two singers also managed to suggest the two characters' own differences of opinion.

Clare Presland brought a sense of nervous energy to Lucretia as well as giving the character something of a sharp edge and toughness, her suicide arising as much from intensity of feeling as nobility of purpose. There was a particularly telling moment in Act Two after the arrival of Collatinus (Trevor Eliot Bowes). The two projected Lucretia and Collatinus as mature characters, their relationship long-lived so that when Presland's Lucretia simply leaned against Bowes' Collatinus, the two barely moving, it told you everything about the completeness of their relationship.

In the opening scene, the three soldiers - Kieran Rayner's Tarquinius, Edmund Danon's Junius and Trevor Eliot Bowes' Collatinus - were strongly contrasted and well delineated.

Britten: The Rape of Lucretia - Kieran Rayner, William Morgan, Trevor Eliot Bowes, Edmund Danon - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Rayner made Tarquinius plausibly engaging, sexually attractive even alongside a sense of entitlement. In the staging of the rape scene, Norton Hale brought out the way Britten's score moves between pure narrative and the character's interior lives. There was nothing particularly physical about the scene yet the results were striking in the extreme. Edmund Danon made Junius something of a focus in the first couple of scenes. He is, after all, the instigator of the action and makes it clear to us that he plans to use Tarquinius' actions for political ends. Here, Junius lurked on the edge of the second scene, watching. Danon did all this with chilling plausibility. Collatinus is not the largest of roles, yet throughout Bowes suggested that character's groundedness and sensibility.

Rosie Lomas as Lucia and Jane Monari as Bianca brought out the two character's innate sympathy and the two singers deftly sketched their very different sensibilities and ages. Britten's writing for the three waiting women in Act One seemed to point forward to his similar scene in Peter Grimes, and here the three singers - Lomas, Monari and Presland - created a profoundly haunting moment.

In the pit, Gerry Cornelius and the instrumental ensemble featuring Chad Vindin on piano created a sound world that vividly extended the stage action into the theatre.

Britten: The Rape of Lucretia - Jenny Stafford, Jane Monari, Clare Presland, Rosie Lomas - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Britten's The Rape of Lucretia is a challenging piece to stage. Robin Norton Hale's stripped back, unfussy production seemed to barely put a foot wrong, bringing out the resonances of the text yet never over-emphasising and providing a strong framework for a terrific ensemble of singers.

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