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The full company of The Rape of Lucretia poses t...
Chateauville Foundation presents Britten's The Rape of Lucretia
May 8, 2007In April 2007, in Castleton, Virginia, Lorin Maazel launched a residency program for young artists with a new, fully-staged production of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera The Rape of Lucretia. Presented by the Châteauville Foundation, which was established ten years ago by Lorin and Dietlinde Maazel and based at the state-of-the-art Theatre House on their 550-acre farm, the production was an exceptional success in every sense. Two performances for an invited audience on April 14 and 15 were the culmination of the collaborative hard work of a company of 50 young artists, mentors, designers, production staff, and apprentices, all under the artistic direction of Maestro Maazel.
The Castleton Residency is an annual program that seeks to connect master artists with up-and-coming talent in an intimate, creatively inspiring setting. All the artists live and work together, maintaining a rigorous rehearsal schedule comparable to that of a professional opera company, while receiving training and career guidance from mentors and visiting faculty. Apprenticeships are available in every discipline connected with opera: conducting; stage direction; set, costume and lighting design; stage, production and company management.
Presiding over the Lucretia rehearsal period was stage director Will Kerley, an Englishman and acclaimed Britten specialist who has directed many young artist productions in the UK. Mr. Kerley was invited to Castleton to stage his first US production on the recommendation of Jonathan Miller. Designers Nicholas Vaughan (sets and costumes), hailing from Carnegie-Mellon University, and Rie Ono (lights), a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, each had a team of talented apprentices working closely with them to create the look of this gorgeous production.
Prior to Maestro Maazel's arrival on April 8, the music preparation was primarily in the hands of assistant conductor, Kenneth Lam, who is currently working towards his masters at Peabody Conservatory, and pianist/coach Justina Lee, of the Metropolitan Opera's young artist program. Nancy Gustafson, the internationally renowned soprano, and Vale Rideout (Male Chorus), who made his San Francisco Opera debut earlier in the season, joined the company as senior artists/mentors and were available for private coachings.
The cast of singers, hand-picked by Mo. Maazel in auditions last fall, was comprised of young professionals and advanced graduate-level students from some of the country's top training programs including those of the Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute and the Metropolitan Opera: Vale Rideout (Male Chorus), Arianna Zukerman (Female Chorus), Tamara Mumford (Lucretia), Matthew Worth (Tarquinius), Allen Boxer (Collatinus), Paul LaRosa (Junius), Alison Tupay (Bianca) and Marnie Breckenridge (Lucia). The cover cast, mostly students from the Peabody Institute of Music, had the invaluable opportunity to perform a full run-through with Mo. Maazel conducting and giving notes. The instrumentalists were drawn from Youth Orchestra of the Americas.
Although all company members were busy with the demands of the production, they each found time for some recreation, whether a bike ride in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a round of bowling, a session in the Turkish bath or a visit with the Maazel's unusual menagerie, which includes a zebra, emus, a zonkey (offspring of the zebra and a donkey) and a very friendly camel named Omar.
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