About the work
Igor Stravinsky's neoclassical opera „The Rake's Progress" was premiered in Venice in 1951. The English libretto is by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, based on William Hogarth's series of paintings of the same name (1735). Stravinsky combines a deliberately archaic Mozartian tradition with modernist distance — an ironic homage to opera buffa.
Plot
England, eighteenth century. The young Tom Rakewell, in love with the country, wants to marry Anne Trulove. Then Nick Shadow appears (in truth the devil) and announces that Tom has inherited a great fortune from an unknown uncle. Tom is to go with Shadow to London — as „servant" Shadow will take Tom's payment „in a year and a day". In London Shadow drives Tom into moral lapses: brothel visit, marriage to the bearded Turk Baba (a circus attraction), investment in an absurd machine that is supposed to turn stones into bread and ruins him. Anne comes to London to find Tom. In a graveyard game for Tom's soul Shadow proposes three cards; Tom guesses all three correctly through Anne's love — Shadow loses. In revenge he drives Tom mad. In the madhouse Bedlam Tom believes himself Adonis and Anne Venus. Anne visits him a last time, sings a lullaby, leaves — Tom dies in madness of a broken heart. In the epilogue all the figures step forward and draw the moral: „For idle hands and hearts and minds the Devil finds a work to do."
Cultural significance
The Rake's Progress is Stravinsky's only full-length opera and his last neoclassical work before the turn to serialism. The music quotes Mozart, Handel and Pergolesi at ironic distance — and set a benchmark for post-modern composing. Performances were at first contested — some critics found the style retrograde. Productions by David Hockney (Glyndebourne 1975, with iconic Hogarthian sets), Robert Lepage and Krzysztof Warlikowski shape the modern understanding. Thomas Adès, Robin Holloway and Mark-Anthony Turnage quote Stravinsky's model.