Picture from ROH website
I attended this last night at the Royal Opera House. I wasn't really sure about it when I booked and even less sure about it as I was travelling to see it. But at £22 for my ticket, I had very little to lose and don't even have the obligation of trying to look intelligent in my review.
I don't like Stravinsky. I know this because I always fast forward through The Rite of Spring on Fantasia, and I heard some ballet music I didn't much care for.
This is a stupid way to form and sustain an opinion, so I thought I would give this a go. It was a revival of a production from a couple of years ago, which I didn't see, but there was something about the casting this time round that I found tempting.
As I Twittered on the way home, I did enjoy it, but it did not capture me in a way that would make me want to see it again. I did try to do some homework, by watching a version broadcast on Sky Arts (from Glyndebourne), but I fell asleep during it, because I was very tired when I sat down to watch it, not necessarily because of the work, and then I never found the time to try again.
This causes a dilemma. I think the best way to see and appreciate a work for the first time is to do so live, but the best way to appreciate a work is through getting to know it and discovering the depths and twists beyond the superficial first impressions. So, perhaps I would enjoy it more if I took the time to get to know it. I certainly found the WH Auden/Chester Kallman libretto excellent.
I enjoyed it because it was a truly splendid production well performed by a strong cast. A million miles from the 'Popstar to Operastar' parody of opera as standing on a stage in sequinned gown bellowing into a microphone.
The audience seemed very young, at least from my seat and interval wanderings, with possibly up to a half being younger than me, and the age range fairly evenly spread between about 12 and over 80. The people behind me included two 20-something men, one on his first ever visit to an opera, and he was saying that he deliberately chose something modern. I didn't want to correct him pedantically on the definition of 'modern' because I thought it an interesting point.
I think even more salient is that for people already interested in theatre, a lively and intelligent production is going to appeal more than a staid traditional stereotypical performance of a warhorse.
For me, the least appealing aspect was the music, but I didn't dislike it so it didn't mar my enjoyment. I simply can't see myself ever listening to it without the visuals. And, let's be honest, how many operas were actually written as 'listen only' experiences*?
Robert Lepage's production was superb and Carl Fillon's set designs even better. Even so, a small part of me wondered whether I would tire of the gimmicks if I saw it repeatedly. This has happened with several productions I have seen more than once.
I particularly liked Lepage's trademark use of video. It's quite common to see video used for background, in place of scenery, and he certainly did that, but there was more. I recall the way he used it to light a big blue oblong to resemble a swimming pool, and a delightful scene where Anne Truelove was driving in her onstage prop car with a video behind her and how the two merged, especially as her trailing scarf blew away, Isadora Duncan style. I thought it rather beautiful.
The setting was 1950s USA rather than 18th century London, and a literalist would find problematic the apparent inconsistency between stage action and libretto; literalists shouldn't really attend operas. The characters were larger than life, although ultimately two-dimensional, and I enjoyed all the performers. The music doesn't lend itself to beautiful showpiece singing, the perfect antidote to the dinosaurs who assert that opera is only about vocalism and singing.
Nevertheless I found all singers to be flawless**. Kyle Ketelsen (Nick Shadow), a greatly underrated and highly intelligent performer was the stand-out. Toby Spence (Tom Rakewell) did a delightful job of portraying a blond English public schoolboy on a downward spiral of decline. I enjoy his voice, and he's good on stage, but I do think his voice lacks edginess and didn't always project well over the orchestra (I have sat in the same seat before and find it to be very good acoustically). Patricia Bardon was in her element playing the OTT Baba the Turk and Rosemary Joshua was delightful as the sweet, innocent Anne Trulove.
The staging had some wonderful gimmicks, not least an inflatable caravan. I also enjoyed the sceen in Mother Goose's brothel where Tom Rakewell shags MG on a bed that shakes like a water bed, collapses around and sucks them down below stage through a narrow slit. The coverings removed, the bed is ostensibly heart-shaped but the intention was clearly to convey Tom being swallowed by female genitalia.
I was a little confused about which angle to take on this production as a feminist. When dramas are set in the past, be they operas, plays, TV dramas or indeed novels, I expect them to reflect the mores and attitudes of that time. A 20th century work can legitimately describe 18th century attitudes and imply 'we are different now'.
I am more comfortable with 18th/19th century pieces which use what we now consider sexism, racism, or support of judicial murder as fundamental to the tragedy than ones which imply that these are good, natural and desirable. Even without that, I can interpret it as being a strong piece of historical evidence to show how shit life was before feminism. (But there is a limit to how far one can accept odious attitudes as mere historical archive).
Being swallowed by a giant vagina was not the only scene open to several interpretations. The use of a buxom swimsuited blonde as auctioneers assistant was a more obvious parody of 1950s values. It's also difficult to say that women got a rum deal when Tom Rakewell was the anti-hero and Nick Shadow was the Devil himself. Nevertheless, I think that too many sexist images inserted in a knowing post-modern way can backfire and be normalised by an audience already bombarded by non-ironic sexism in the mainstream media.
I'm afraid I can't say anything intelligent about the orchestral playing under Ingo Metzmacher, but it would be ill-mannered not to acknowledge their contribution to an enjoyable evening.
How an opera cured me of being a rake -Toby Spence - The Times
Kyle Ketelsen- MusicOMH
Toby Spence on Stravinsky and Jacques Brel - What's on Stage
Interview: Patricia Bardon on The Rake's Progress at Covent Garden- Musical Criticism
The Rake's Progress: the TV vision of the world's greatest director - The Telegraph
The Rake’s Progress at Covent Garden, London WC2 - The Times
The Rake’s Progress at the Royal Opera House and Blessed Spirit at the Wigmore Hall- Telegraph (I still haven't written my impressions of Blessed Spirit)
The Rake's Progress - What's on Stage
London’s Rambunctious Rake - Opera Today
Royal Opera's Rake's Progress proves a Trial - Intermezzo
The Rake at Covent Garden: Too Spectacular for its own good? - Orpheus Complex
A trailer from the ROH website - with the 2008 cast. Not very good streaming media: it doesn't stream when paused, and when the 'play' overtakes what's streamed, it goes automatically to pause and then back to the beginning. Sigh
A Twitpic from Kyle's phone. Not a great photo but does show the on-stage cars wonderfully.
* except for certain 'oratorios' by eg Handel which were so written in order to comply with the ban on staged productions in Lent; in my opinion they benefit from at least a semi-staging
** a comment that must of course be qualified by my ignorance of the work
