The Libretto of Britten's Rape of Lucretia : Revisiting Opera's Basics

After WWII opera was generally considered as the socio-cultural symbol of a civilisation that had failed when confronted to barbarism, except in Britain where the genre does not seem to have been questioned. After composing Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten desired to go back to the basics of the genre. His first chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia on a libretto in verse by Ronald Duncan constitutes an original experiment in the musical world of the time. What does Duncan borrow from the French playwright Andre Obey (1892-1975), and from his illustrious predecessors, Shakespeare, Ovid or Livy ? What remains of those influences in the dialogue between the text and the music in the opera ? These questions need to be answered to understand why the work was the first stone in the reconstruction of genre newly reborn.