Stravinsky - The Rake's Progress (Aix, 2017)

Igor Stravinsky - The Rake's Progress

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2017

Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Simon McBurney, Julia Bullock, Paul Appleby, Kyle Ketelsen, Evan Hughes, David Pittsinger, Hilary Summers, Andrew Watts, Alan Oke

ARTE Concert - 11th July 2017

To borrow a phrase from Baba the Turk, the rationale behind Stravinsky's neoclassical account of The Rake's Progress is not only perplexing to many, but it can be vexing too. Without some imagination and purpose applied it can - to continue with Baba the Turk's own commentary - show too much devotion towards an ancient flame and end up being, in dramatic and musical terms, nothing more than a souless pastiche of Classical opera mannerisms. In that respect, the opera could even be a self-regarding commentary on it own nature.

When a work seems to be a superficial pastiche or a commentary on itself, it leaves limited scope for a director to do something new or interesting with it, but surely The Rake's Progress offers more potential than Simon McBurney brings to the new production of the opera at the Aix-en-Provence festival? Like his Magic Flute, which appeared at Aix a few years ago and at a few other European opera houses, the use of stage-craft is innovative - this time using an almost entirely computer generated boxed-in surrounding set - but it plays along with the superficiality of the work, illustrating it without finding or bringing any new depth in it.

It's true anyway of course that The Rake's Progress, based on a series of Hogarth 18th century prints, is essentially a cautionary tale warning of the dangers of being swept away by the superficial attractions of money and the dissolute lifestyle that comes with it, its superficial attractions blinding us from where true beauty lies and what life has to offer. On that level at least, as well as on a level that impressed with its open-box immersive visual extravagance, the production design matches the intent of the original. And, regardless of the fact that the Hogarth series is almost three hundred years old, its point about sinful indulgence lacking the true rewards of moral integrity still holds true, even if the times have changed.

Simon McBurney's production design is essentially then an updating of David Hockney's updating of the Hogarth prints in his designs for John Cox's celebrated Glyndebourne production, the world depicted in one of flat paintings come to life. McBurney's version of this world is a fake computer-generated equivalent, projected appropriately on a thin paper wall blank sheet. Nick Shadow is the first person to rip a whole in the wall and step into Tom Rakewell's perfect but dull world, and the fragile nature of this delusion is exposed with further rips and tears, the most damage being done with all the trivial luxury items purchased by Tom's new wife Baba poking through the walls and ceiling.

Aside from images of a stock-market crash and the towers of the City melting down, in essence there's nothing here that really puts any new spin on the dehumanising endgame of materialism, consumerism or capitalism. Rakewell's bread-making machine viewed as nothing more than a brown box hardly scales up the operation to a level where this would have any valid social commentary on the world today, and there's little in the opera anyway beyond platitutes of innocence and virtue in Trulove that suggest that there's any real-world alternative. By merely illustrating it, McBurney's production exposes the thinness of the opera's concept as much its basic morality tale, and the work needs more real engagement with its subject than this.

Musically, as sophisticated as Stravinsky's writing undoubtedly is in its own terms, never mind the cleverness of its appropriation and reworking of its neoclassical reference points, The Rake's Progress still risks coming across as little more than an early model for the West End or Broadway musical. Or worse, as an insincere West End or Broadway musical. I don't think the rather Handel oratorio-like archaic formality of expression of Auden and Kellman's dialogues helps, the libretto often giving the impression of just being clever for the sake of it without really expressing anything that has genuine feeling in it or a belief in the story it tells.

The blandness of the dialogues extends to the characters, who never come to life or show any real personality. Tom Rakewell, Anne Trulove, Nick Shadow; as their allegorical names indicate, they are all ciphers created to fit a predetermined role unenlivened by a sense of humour or irony instead of their natures arising out of their circumstances, behaviour or situations. The singing and dramatic presentation of these caricatures is well handled by Julia Bullock, Paul Appleby and Kyle Ketelsen, but inevitably superficial and mannered, lacking any human interest or purpose. Rather like the work itself, the Aix-en-Provence 2017 production of The Rake's Progress is something that it is easier to admire than truly enjoy.

Links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, ARTE Concert

Stravinsky - Oedipus Rex (Aix-en-Provence, 2016)

Igor Stravinsky - Oedipus Rex/Symphony of Psalms

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2016

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Peter Sellars, Joseph Kaiser, Violeta Urmana, Willard White, Joshua Stewart, Pauline Cheviller, Laurel Jenkins

Culturebox - 17th July 2016

The performance of Stravinsky's Oedpius Rex and Symphony of Psalms at the Aix-en-Provence festival is a perfect example of just what is so important and great about opera as a living artform. You can ponder the implications of Sophocles' Greek drama, you can give attention to where Stravinsky places emphasis in his reading of the material, and you can formulate all kinds of connections between the real-world and how it is presented on the stage. Sometimes however timing and events can add yet another entirely unpredictable and unforeseen element to give a work of art a life entirely of its own.

The event in question at the time of this July 17th 2016 performance of Oedipus Rex at Aix-en-Provence, was the terrorist attack a few days earlier in nearby Nice during the Bastille Day celebrations that resulted in 84 deaths. In the light of such a horrific event it becomes impossible not to look at this production in a different way from how it might have been originally intended, or from how you might have looked at it even a week earlier. If the production however touches on the essence of the questions raised in the ancient Greek drama, it will inevitably make its own truthful associations with those recent events, and Peter Sellars' production does seem to touch at the heart of them.

So while such events were evidently far from the mind of the original Igor Stravinsky/Jean Cocteau presentation of the Sophocles drama, its combination with Peter Sellars' modern dress production opens the drama up enough to allow it to resonate with such events. Suddenly, without it being the intention of anyone involved, you can see the fear and incomprehension of the French nation in the people of Thebes as they are afflicted by a terrible plague. You can see too how they would turn to their leader in this time of mourning to seek reassurance and protection. You can also see the powerlessness felt by that ruler - a man in a suit - who is ignorant of the part he has played in bringing this plague upon his people. In denial, feeling assailed and powerless to do anything else, his natural reaction is to strike out.

Sellars' direction might still be encumbered somewhat by familiar mannerisms and affectations, but there is unquestionably something absolutely right about the method employed if it allows those connections to be made. It's debatable whether the tribal wood carvings and throne add anything other than relating the present to antiquity, suggesting that there is a deeper human truth here that lies outside the surface considerations of time, place and dress costume. The chorus making exaggerated semaphored hand-signals is another affectation that doesn't really seem to add anything, but if without really being aware of it it makes the audience pay more attention to the words being expressed and it helps the chorus think about the importance and urgence of what they are singing, then it undoubtedly serves its purpose here.

I'm sure that the direction and the sense of occasion would have made its way into the singing performances as well. You can certainly get a sense of that in the performance of Joseph Kaiser as Oedipus. The ruler of Thebes is a man of authority and respect for his past actions saving the city, and Kaiser carries all of that in his lyrical tone, but there's an edge there as well as the enormity of his origins starts to become clear. Willard White is also fired up in this performance as Creon, Tiresias and Messenger, delivering messages that no-one wants to hear. In a role that is equally emotional, Violeta Urmana struggles however to contain and control it, her singing sounding rather wayward in a wavering line, but it's an intense performance. The speaking role of the narrator/Antigone shouldn't be underestimated for its importance in relating events and relating to the audience, and Pauline Cheviller gets that across with deep feeling.

Although musically connected, coming from the same period in Stravinsky's neoclassical style, it does seem odd to pair the Greek drama of Oedipus Rex with the Christian sentiments of Symphony of Psalms. Dramatically for the sake of the staging however, Sellers draws very loosely in this short presentation from Sophocles' 'Oedipus at Colonus'. Pauline Cheviller's Antigone is again the narrator who links the two parts together, and Ismene is played by a dancer. In this follow-up, the wandering blind Oedipus in exile is led by his daughter away from Thebes to be welcomed in Colonus near Athens, where he will end his days "with peace divine". Setting the Greek play to Symphony of Psalms does seem tenuous on a rational level, but rationality and suitability are not so much the point here as taking the lessons learned from Oedipus to the next stage on a human level.

The stage accordingly is emptied of any props, reflecting an Oedipus stripped of his former life, his position, his sight. Sellers uses lighting effects to describe his emotional state, some of which is rather Robert Wilson-like in effect, with a small neon square of light to the side of the stage being where Oedipus eventually is led and left to lie down and rest. It looks gorgeous and is a perfect accompaniment and setting for Stravinsky's beautiful music, conducted here wonderfully by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The singers again punch out the choral singing with arms and hands, and some ballet movements all contribute to reflect what is being expressed and how it relates to what is going on in world not so very far away from where this performance took place in Provence.

Links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Culturebox

Stravinsky - Oedipus Rex

Igor Stravinsky - Oedipus Rex

Poznan Opera House, Poland - 2013

Jacek Przybylowicz, Grzegorz Weirus, Christophe Poncet, Joëlle Charlier, Jerzy Mechlinski, Andrzej Ogorkiewicz, Piotr Friebe, Jaromir Trafankowski, Aleksander Machlaica

Armel Opera Festival, Szeged - ARTE Live Web - 5th October 2013

Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, "an opera-oratorio after Sophocles", is one of the most fascinating works of the composer's neoclassical period. One of the more interesting elements of the Stravinsky's approach here, for example, is the use of older traditional styles that isn't so much a homage as an exploration of different musical archetypes, aligning them appropriately (or inappropriately for effect according to some commentators) to specific characters. Stravinsky's measure of the subject, the dramatic content and its mythological subject is moreover just about perfect. In its formal construction and declarative nature - with a libretto written by Jean Cocteau - it's hard to imagine the work being anything but an oratorio, but there are inevitably grand and tragic elements that are drawn out, and this Poznan Opera House production captures them well.

In as far as the opera-oratorio's relating of the events of Sophocles' Greek tragedy go, the work is divided into two parts. The sequence of events is related by a narrator (in the original language of the audience, which for the purposes of this production is Polish), while the drama is conducted in Latin. Act I concerns the fate of Thebes, which the narrator tells us has already been rescued from the terror of the Sphinx and now faces devastation from the Plague. The chorus beg Oedipus to once again come to their rescue, but the oracle at Delphi has told Creon that the curse can only be lifted when it is discovered who is the murderer of King Laius. Act II presents the unravelling of Oedipus as he comes to the realisation that he is the son of Laius and Jocasta, and that the old man he once killed at a crossroads was therefore his own father and the woman he is married to is his mother.

Staged for the 2013 Armel Opera Festival, the oratorio nature of the work does pose some challenges with staging, but director and choreographer Jacek Przybylowicz finds a way of retaining and supporting the relative simplicity of the related events by having dancers perform the expanded role of the chorus. There's nothing too experimental attempted, the dancers meaningfully integrating with the content of the work while keeping the stage active and the giving the audience something to focus on. The stage itself is otherwise rather minimally decorated, with a gallery at the back for the chorus and the use of blocky thrones to indicate the regal positions of Oedipus and Jocasta. There is some opening out of the story, with a child used during the relating of how Oedipus is discovered by a shepherd, while the dramatic conclusion of Jocasta's death and Oedipus's blinding is effectively staged with the wrapping of Oedipus in a scarf.

Presented for the Armel Opera Festival, this rare production of Oedipus Rex is staged as an opportunity to judge the performances of two competition singers in the main roles. Tenor Christophe Poncet, possessing a lively high timbre that would suit a bel canto or a Verdi role, sang Oedpius with exactly the right kind of Italian character that Stravinsky created for the role. He is a little shaky in places, but gets a good balance between the declarative projecting of the role and making it dramatically meaningful, which is by no means easy to achieve. Joëlle Charlier's Jocasta commands attention and sings the role well, but doesn't have the strong lower end that the dramatic side of the mezzo-soprano role requires. The supporting roles are well sung and the production also benefits from a powerful musical account of the work with Grzegorz Weirus conducting the Szeged Symphony Orchestra.

The Armel Opera Festival performance of Oedipus Rex can be viewed for free for six months after the performance on the ARTE Live Web streaming service. Subtitles are French only.

Stravinsky - The Rake’s Progress

Igor Stravinsky - The Rake’s Progress

Glyndebourne, 2010

Vladimir Jurowski, John Cox, David Hockney, Miah Persson, Topi Lehtipuu, Clive Bayley, Matthew Rose, Susan Gorton, Elena Manistina, Graham Clark, Duncan Rock

Opus Arte

Although it evidently depends on the opera in question, there is always room nonetheless for a wide range of expression and interpretation in how productions of operas are staged. There are however no hard and fast rules – a Baroque opera composed according to very strict musical conventions can take on a new life when subjected to a modern, avant-garde stage production, while relatively modern and difficult works can be opened up by a traditional straightforward staging that reveals their references, origins and underlying intent. Few works however seem so perfectly matched and strike such a perfect balance between the intentions of the opera work and its presentation on the stage as David Hockney’s designs for the classic Glyndebourne production of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.

The measure of the success of the production is that it was first put on at Glyndebourne in 1975 and, as this 2010 performance at the festival shows, it is still delighting and wowing audiences thirty-five years later and will no doubt continue to be revived for many more years. There aren’t many productions that have that kind of staying power. A modern artist surely not to everyone’s taste, one might expect something relatively avant-garde from David Hockney when called upon to design the set for a 20th century opera, but in reality, his approach almost perfectly mirrors Stravinsky’s method of composition for The Rake’s Progress. Seeking inspiration directly from the source of William Hogarth original drawings made in the 1730s, Hockney’s sets reproduce the intricate cross-hatching in bold, colourful strokes on flat board backdrops – a modern interpretation of a classical design.

It works so well because, after all, that’s exactly what Stravinsky’s opera does also. Composed in 1951, the composer working in the neo-classical form (before he moved on to serial composition), The Rake’s Progress accordingly plays to the conventions of the 18th century opera. Classically structured into three acts, with three scenes in each, Stravinsky’s 20th century composition even uses recitative with harpsichord continuo and da capo arias in his treatment of a subject that has many resonances with Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte and Don Giovanni, but has an even a greater range of references to draw from over the subsequent expansions of the form and subject through Donizetti, Rossini and Gounod, to name but a few.

Since it wears its references openly, the names of the characters even reflecting their types – Tom Rakewell leaving behind his beloved Anne Trulove on the instigation of his demonic alter-ego Nick Shadow for a life of dissolution in London – The Rake’s Progress can be an opera that is easier to admire more than to really love. The symmetrical construction of the opera conforms to a predetermined order of the classical subject – a young man, coming-of-age, uncommitted to settling down to a life of domesticity in marriage and a solid career, decides to explore the endless pleasures that life offers, only to find in the end that there’s something to be said for a more simple lifestyle. It’s an A-B-A structure that is even mirrored in the structure of the three scenes in each of the three acts. It’s all very clever but a little dull and constricting, and the opera can consequently be a little static when performed.

There are however compensating factors that prevent The Rake’s Progress from being merely a pastiche that is too clever for its own good. The libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman is direct but allusive and elusive, knowing but hinting at deeper underlying truths. The same can be said of Stravinsky’s score, which doesn’t just reference various styles, but expands on them with extraordinary arrangements that do indeed force you to reflect on the nature of the characters as well as how their lives and relationships are constructed and revealed through opera techniques. The blending together of the libretto with the score through the singing isn’t always perfect – and the moral at the ending is a little trite (il dissoluto punito) – but there are some wonderful and dazzling ensemble pieces with duos and trios that are as good as anything by Mozart. Well, almost.

What this particular Glyndebourne production has going for it as well, is of course the production by David Hockney and John Cox. If it’s a little static in places, that’s often more to do with the nature of the opera itself, which is more reflection than action, and the decision to adhere closely to the Hogarth arrangements. Every scene however is an absolute delight, breathtaking in some places, with marvellous little touches that bring out the humour of the situations well. Vladimir Jurowski treats the opera very much as a Russian work, while being mindful of its English and international aspects. These are brought out fully in the casting and the singing, which is of fine quality throughout, with Miah Persson and Topi Lehtipuu demonstrating perfect English diction. If their acting performances are unremarkable, it’s probably more a failing with the nature of the opera itself – but there are enough compensating factors in the singing, the staging and the performance to make this a highly entertaining experience.

With the kind of cross-hatching that you have in the production design, the last thing you want is aliasing in the transfer, but the transfer copes very well with only a faint hint of instability in one or two places in the textures of the costumes, particularly tweeds. It’s very minor however, and for me it just drew attention to the fact that the detail of the overall production concept is taken through to the costume design. Otherwise, the full impact of the colourful production is well captured in the High Definition transfer and in the actual filming. LPCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 tracks capture the detail of the musical performance brilliantly and dynamically. Extra features include a Cast Gallery, a brief Introduction to The Rake’s Progress that contains recent interviews with Hockney and Cox about the production, and a wider look at the opera in a 12-minute Behind The Rake’s Progress featurette.