Thorne returns to conduct his second Britten chamber opera

After the acclaim for his conducting of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw in 2019 (“Michael Thorne’s taut, controlled reading brought out the spine-chilling terror and seductive beauty of the score”), Thorne returns to New Palace Opera with the composer’s first chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia on 22 March 2020.

He explains in his own words:

As a 16 year old, I was drawn to the music of Britten through youth orchestra experiences and then the War Requiem and Peter Grimes. A decade later the ‘church parable’ (as he called his chamber opera) Curlew River commanded its place on my list of Desert Island Discs even to today.

I subsequently happened upon Britten’s own recording of The Rape of Lucrecia and was immediately struck by a much more ambiguous plot. There is a more personal response to it than in the original Livy tale of how rape led to a suicide pact which in turn led to the foundation of the Roman Republic. Indeed, there is the greater moral hazard of the piece: post-World War Two, was rape seen as pure sex rather than as the violence we recognise today?

After The Turn of the Screw, looking to work once again with tenor Jonathan Finney and soprano Zoe South brought up The Rape of Lucrecia as an obvious choice, given not only the currency of the #MeToo agenda but also because our instrumental players’ relish of Britten’s unique use of orchestral forces. The harp is the backbone of the music in both operas, as is percussion with perhaps the most chilling passage in Lucrecia being the Male Chorus’s spoken description (with untuned drum accompaniment) of Tarquinius’s heinous actions.

All three of Britten’s first operas feature ‘Sunday morning’ moments when the prospects for all are bright and beautiful, and our New Palace Opera ensemble has the technical and musical capability to bring out Britten’s full emotional range, even in a concert performance, which is why I am looking forward to working with them all again.