The Rake's Progress

By Igor Stravinsky

A revival of the 1975 Festival Production
Sung in English with Supertitles

Listen to Audio Extracts:

Clips with kind permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg.
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Supported by:

and Carol and Paul Collins

Inspired by William Hogarth’s famous cycle of satirical prints, and blessed with one of the cleverest librettos in all opera – courtesy of the poet W. H. Auden and his friend Chester Kallman – Stravinsky’s 1951 opera (whose Venice premiere was, coincidentally, directed by Glyndebourne’s then producer, Carl Ebert) is a modern musical morality play. The ‘hero’ Tom Rakewell, signs a Faustian pact with the devil, swaps the simple country life and a devoted sweetheart for the vain pursuit of big-city bonuses and increasingly exotic pleasures (climaxing in a loveless marriage to the bearded lady from a local fair) and ends up bankrupt and insane in Bedlam.

Framed within David Hockney’s delightfully post-Hogarthian cross-hatched designs, John Cox’s 1975 Glyndebourne Festival production proved an instant classic. Last revived for millennium year, it is now conducted for the First time at Glyndebourne by the Festival’s Music Director, Vladimir Jurowski. Finnish tenor Topi Lehtipuu and Swedish soprano Miah Persson – previously heard together as Ferrando and Fiordiligi in the original 2006 run of Nicholas Hytner’s Così fan tutte – are reunited as poor mad Tom and his true love Anne, with Matthew Rose (winner of the John Christie Award in 2006) as the Mephistophelian tempter, Nick Shadow.

Edition by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd

Performance schedule Festival 2009

Key

* = Pre-performance talk available in the in the Ebert Room.

Creative team

Conductor Vladimir Jurowski
Director John Cox
Designer David Hockney
Lighting Designer Robert Bryan

Cast

Father Trulove Clive Bayley
Anne Trulove Miah Persson
Tom Rakewell Topi Lehtipuu
Nick Shadow Matthew Rose
Mother Goose Susan Gorton
Baba the Turk Elena Manistina
Sellem Graham Clark

London Philharmonic Orchestra
The Glyndebourne Chorus