Lucrezia (Portraits of a Woman)

Description

Raped by Sextus Tarquin, son of the Etruscan king occupying Rome, Lucretia speaks out to describe her ordeal and demand justice. Then, refusing to live in dishonor, she takes her own life. Recounted by Livy, this episode marks the birth of the Roman Republic and has inspired numerous visual, literary, and musical works. Jérôme Correas and Les Paladins explore this foundational story and contextualize the only four Baroque cantatas composed on the subject known to date. In these miniature operas, Alessandro Scarlatti, Montéclair, Handel, and Marcello set Lucretia's speech to music: alternating between expressionist recitatives and virtuosic arias, these monologues follow Lucretia's emotional and expressive journey, moving from a whisper to a cry, from exaltation to dejection, until the final silence. To give her a voice, Jérôme Correas joins forces with four of the finest French singers—Sandrine Piau, Amel Brahim-Djelloul, Karine Deshayes, and Lucile Richardot: each takes on Lucretia's story, which reaches us intact in its force and violence, overlapping with today's narratives and questioning contemporary female speech.