Lucretia!.. What do you want? - Thomas Allen & Catherine Wyn-Rogers (The Rape of Lucretia)

The Rape of Lucretia (1946)
Benjamin Britten

23 March 2005
London, St John's Smith Square

Tarquinius: Thomas Allen
Lucretia: Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Male Chorus: Peter Hoare
Female Chorus: Geraldine McGreevy



TARQUINIUS
Lucretia!

LUCRETIA
What do you want?

TARQUINIUS
You!

LUCRETIA
What do you want from me?

TARQUINIUS
Me! What do you fear?

LUCRETIA
You!
In the forest of my dreams
You have always been the Tiger.

TARQUINIUS
Give me your lips
Then let my eyes
See their first element
Which is
your eyes.

LUCRETIA
No!

TARQUINIUS
Give me your lips
Then let me rise
To my first sepulchre,
Which is
your thighs.

LUCRETIA
No! Never!

TARQUINIUS
Give me your lips
Then let me rest
On the oblivion
Which is
your breast.

LUCRETIA
No!

TARQUINIUS
Give me!

LUCRETIA
No! What you have taken
Never can you be given!

TARQUINIUS
Would you have given?

LUCRETIA
How could I give, Tarquinius,
Since I have given to Collatinus,
In whom I am, wholly;
With whom I am, only;
And without whom I am, lonely?

TARQUINIUS
Yet the linnet in your eyes
Lifts with desire,
And the cherries of your lips
Are wet with wanting.
Can you deny your bloods dumb
pleading?

LUCRETIA
Yes, I deny.

TARQUINIUS
Through April eyes
Your young blood sighs;
And denies
refusal
and denial
of your lips frail lies.

LUCRETIA
No, you lie!

TARQUINIUS
Can you refuse your bloods desiring?

LUCRETIA
Yes, I refuse!

TARQUINIUS
Lucretia!

LUCRETIA
I refuse!

TARQUINIUS
Can you deny?

LUCRETIA
I deny!

TARQUINIUS
Your blood denies!

LUCRETIA
You lie, you lie!

TARQUINIUS
Lucretia!

(She turns away from him)

LUCRETIA
Oh, my beloved Collatinus,
You have loved so well
You have tuned my body
To the chaste note of a silver lute
And thus you have made my blood
Keep the same measure
As your loves own purity.
For pitys sake, please go!

TARQUINIUS
Loveliness like this
Cannot be chaste
Unless all men are blind!
Too late, Lucretia, too late!
Easier stem the Tibers flood
Than to calm my angry blood
Which coursing to the ocean of your eyes
Rages for the quietus of your thighs.

LUCRETIA
Is this the Prince of Rome?

TARQUINIUS
I am your Prince!

LUCRETIA
Passions a slave and not a Prince!

TARQUINIUS
Then release me!

LUCRETIA
What peace can passion find?

(He takes her in his arms)

TARQUINIUS
Lucretia! Lucretia!

LUCRETIA
Though I am in your arms
I am beyond your reach!

(She struggles free)

MALE AND FEMALE CHORUS
Go, Tarquinius!

MALE CHORUS
Go, Tarquinius,
Before the cool fruit of her breasts
Burns your hand
And consumes your heart with that fire
Which is only quenched by more desire.
Go, Tarquinius! Go!

FEMALE CHORUS (going near to bed)
Go, Tarquinius,
Before your nearness
Tempts Lucretia to yield
To your strong maleness.

TARQUINIUS
Beauty is all
In life!
It has the peace
Of death.

LUCRETIA
If beauty leads to this,
Beauty is sin.

TARQUINIUS
Though my bloods dumb
It speaks.
Thongh my bloods blind
It finds.

LUCRETIA
I am his,
Not yours.

TARQUINIUS
Beauty so pure
Is cruel.
Throngh your eyes tears
I weep.
For your lips fire
I thirst.
For your breasts peace
I fight.

LUCRETIA
Loves indivisible, loves indivisible!

MALE AND FEMALE CHORUS
Go! Tarquinius,
Whilst passion is still proud
And before your lust is spent
Humbled with heavy shame.
If you do not repent
Time itself cannot
Erase this moment from your name.

TARQUINIUS
I hold the knife
But bleed.
Though I have won
Im lost.
Give me my soul
Again;
In your veins sleep
My rest.

LUCRETIA
No!

TARQUINIUS
Give me my birth
Again
Out of your loins
Of pain!
Thongh I must give
I take.

LUCRETIA
For pitys
sake, Tarquinius,
Go!

(He pulls the coverlet from the bed and
threatens her with his sword)

TARQUINIUS
Poised like a dart.

LUCRETIA
At the heart of woman.

MALE CHORUS
Man climbs towards his God,

FEMALE CHORUS
Then falls to his lonely hell.

(He mounts the bed)

OMNES
See how the rampant centaur mounts the sky
And serves the sun with all its seed of stars.
Now the great river underneath the ground
Flows through Lucretia and Tarquinius is drowned.

(Tarquinius beats out the candle with his
sword. The front cloth falls quickly)

Category:

Music

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