Superb singing and orchestral playing, but the production is the ego trip of the stage director and designer and ignores everything Stravinsky and Auden were trying to get across. A fine example of "Euro-trash." Tom Rakewell becomes a bohemian artist in search of his aesthetic (so we are told in the notes). Costume: paint-spattered jeans and Brando T-shirt. A wooden airplane on stage signifies his dream excursions. Ann Truelove appears in a shift or perhaps it is a slip. Baba the Turk wears a butterscotch leather jacket over a black T-shirt with a yellow happy face along with a mini-skirt. A group of monkeys come and go. Nick Shadow is sort of a Mafia hood. Father Truelove wears Levi's and acts the hick farmer. It's such a shame, since the singing and the playing are so fine. If you want to see and hear Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress as he and W. H. Auden intended it, find a copy of the 1975 production designed by David Hockney and conducted by Bernard Haitink with Felicity Lott, Samuel Ramey, Rosalind Elias and other outstanding singers. The production is designed with Hogarth's engravings (upon which the opera is based) in mind. I should add that I am not against innovative staging. Sarah Caldwell did an innovative Rake's Progress in Boston in the late 60s and it worked because she honored the text and the music.

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The Rake's Progress

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