It started with Livy, the ancient historian who chronicled how the rape and subsequent suicide of a general's virtuous wife incited the Romans to overthrow the occupying Etruscans. The subject was later taken up in the writings of Ovid, St. Augustine and Shakespeare; in paintings by Titian, Botticelli, Raphael and many more. A 1931 play by French author Andre Obey told the story in a series of dramatic scenes narrated by a Greek-style male and female "chorus," who comment but do not participate in the action. A year later Thornton Wilder adapted Obey's play for Broadway.

In 1946, English composer Benjamin Britten created a unique opera with a highly literate libretto by Ronald Duncan based on Obey's play. Commissioned by the Glyndebourne Festival and intended to tour the British Isles, the opera required only eight singers and 13 instrumentalists. It ran on Broadway in 1949-50, with singers Kitty Carlisle and Giorgio Tozzi among the protagonists.

Britten's "The Rape of Lucretia" is not well known even among opera goers, but it is a powerful theatrical experience, and Pittsburgh Opera's resident artists are enacting it with relish in a splendid production that opened Saturday in the CAPA Theater, Downtown.

Thanks to an interface between Pittsburgh Opera and Carnegie Mellon's School of Drama, the production benefits from the attractive and versatile unit set designed by Scott Tedmon-Jones, costumes by Kim Lorentz that span several eras, and dramatic lighting by Stevie Agnew.

In his compelling staging of "Lucretia," Dan Rigazzi emphasizes the story's timeless quality, with the Male and Female Choruses acting as Christian missionaries, spying, as it were, on the salacious acts of pagans and misinterpreting pre-Christian events with modern moralism. Soldiers swagger in macho SS uniforms, and Lucretia and her maidservants are classically robed as they wait for the men to return home. The rape scene is strongly staged, with a powerful freeze tableau evoking Titian.

Musically, local union instrumentalists play with high professionalism as directed by Glenn Lewis, and the young cast does well with this demanding but eminently singable score. Noah Baetge and Danielle Pastin (Male and Female Chorus) set the scene with clear enunciation (aided by the excellent supertitles) and attention to the meaning of the words. Tenor Baetge, in a role created for Britten's life partner, Peter Pears, negotiates the high passages with ringing tone, occasionally going off the core of his voice in the middle and low, although not at the expense of intelligibility. Ms. Pastin's soprano has a melting, seductive timbre, and she interprets her narration with an ear for color, cutting through even when the music lies (by the composer's intention) below her comfortable range.

Lucretia is Lindsay Ammann, a 25-year-old mezzo whose voice is already a force of nature, capable of sinister low chest tones and robust high notes that can express a gamut of emotions. Her lament in the "Flowers" aria is painfully affecting, followed by a subtly nuanced declamation (on a repeated low B for several lines) of her ravishment. Lucretia's attendants -- the old nurse Bianca (Katherine Drago) and the flighty young Lucia (Shannon Kessler Dooley) -- are each characterized with conviction and solid sound.

Dan Kempson's Tarquinius is not as threatening as some, but he puts his lyrical baritone to good use in the bel canto lines of "Within this frail crucible of light," where this antihero pauses to collect his courage before doing the dreadful deed. Liam Moran sings warmly and acts with sensitivity as Collatinus, the husband who forgives Lucretia when she cannot forgive herself. Craig Verm, an Opera Center alumnus, sings superbly and portrays the cuckolded Junius with just the right combination of macho affectation and concealed grief.

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