Ambition, betrayal, murder, architecture: Rattenbury on stage

Francis Rattenbury entered the public eye as a young and inexperienced architect when he won a competition to design British Columbia's legislature building in the 1890s.

But true international fame came in 1935, when he was bludgeoned to death and his wife's teenaged lover was convicted for the crime.

"It's a story of operatic proportions, as most people know," Victoria composer Tobin Stokes said. 

That did not make it an easy tale to turn into an actual opera, Stokes told On the Island host Gregor Craigie.

"I started to research the story and I wanted to know what made Rattenbury tick and what happened and why."

Rattenbury, which took Stokes five years to research, write and score, premieres Nov. 3 at Pacific Opera Victoria's intimate Baumann Centre with Tenor Richard Margison in the architect's role and Kathleen Brett as his second wife, Alma.

After his early fame, from his design of the domed legislature building, Victoria's Empress Hotel and other major works, Rattenbury, known as "Ratz" to his friends, faced resentment from other architects and failed business gambits.

Then, Rattenbury embarked on what Stokes called "his greatest commission ever."

"That was to fall in love and marry someone half his age.at the cost of his family and his current wife," Stokes said.

Shunned by Victoria society 

Rattenbury and his new wife Alma (nee Packenham) were ostracized by Victoria society. They moved to the seaside town of Bournemouth in England  to start over.

"That didn't go so well either."  Stokes said. The couple hired a local boy, George Stoner, as chauffeur, who soon became Alma's lover.

In March 1935, Rattenbury was bludgeoned with a wooden mallet and later died. The lovers were charged with murder, Alma was acquitted, but Stoner convicted and sentenced to hang.

Stoner's sentence was later reduced, but not before Alma took her own life in despair over his death sentence

That much of the story is well known, Stokes said, "but that doesn't help the story and to find out how a man with such proportions in his buildings and his life became narrower and narrower, to the point where he lived in this little house and this little town somewhere else, and everything falling apart."

To understand his character's motivation and what happened, Stokes delved into the biography by the late Victoria author Terry Reksten. In the U.K., he read court records, Alma's suicide notes and dramatic retellings of the case.

The 1930s era figures prominently in the opera score.

"Alma was a songwriter and she was desperately trying to write popular songs in the 1930s as Rattenbury was quickly running out of money," Stokes said. "I've taken the idea of these simple songs that she was trying to write and I've imbued the score with those."

There are no firm plans as yet for future Rattenbury  productions though Stokes said there is interest in London.

​"I think what might happen here is I'll go back to Pacific Opera and say 'hey, let's add a chorus and a big orchestra and come back in a few years with a grand opera'."