Igor Stravinsky - The Rake's Progress (Theatre de la Monnaie) [DVD]

I just finished this absolutely captivating production of Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" from Brussel's Théâtre de la Monnaie, in a thrilling production sure to rattle some cages by director Robert Lepage and can't find enough good things to say about it.

Lepage has moved the opera up to the 1950's - the era in which Stravinsky composed the opera (and for some well thought out reasons), and set it in the American West. Taking advantage of the state of the art projection equipment available today, the curtain rises on a breathtaking view of an oil field that somehow combines George Steven's classic motion picture "Giant" with the Trevor Nunn production of Oklahoma, with Anne and Tom stretched out on a blanket declaring their love. When Shadow appears, he rises from the ground beneath an enormous, ever pumping, oil derrick - and is black - covered head to toe in Texas tea.

The next scene London is transformed into a movie set and the derrick has turned into a director's boom/jib with Shadow riding high above the action calling out through a megaphone. Mother Goose is transformed into a Marlene Dietrich styled brothel madam and when Tom takes her they sink beneath the stage taking miles of pink satin sheets with them leaving a giant heart-shaped bed, and a bar room brawl. With Stravinsky's music - it all seems to work perfectly!

When Anne races to rescue Tom, it is in a little red convertible sportscar, windshield wipers going and Anne's silk scarves blowing in the wind until carried off on a life of its own. Projected images speed by and she even makes a few hairpin turns, and the images filling the stage around her slow down into the city's streets. It is nothing short of dazzling showmanship - I can't recall anything quite like it. She arrives at a movie theatre complete with Hollywood searchlights and a marquee emblazoned with "Baba the Turk and Tom Rakewell - a Nick Shadow Production." The scene is at once, hilarious and infinitely touching.

Later, we find Baba and Tom lounging poolside, Baba taking a dip, Tom reading Variety with the hilarious headline "Gloria Swanson to star in Sunset Boulevard" (next to that is an opera review!). The entire thing here has a "Sunset Blvd." feel entirely appropriate to the proceedings.

The scenes primarily involving Tom and Nick have a lovely, eerily sinister feel to them, the first taking place before Tom's trailer on the movie set (a hilarious bit of scenery change that provokes laughter from an otherwise fairly staid audience) ... Tom is partially dressed in what appears to be a Cassanova costume, the stars are twinkling, his ego is raging and evil is afoot. It's brilliant.

Vocally things could hardly be better. Andrew Kennedy - all milkfed faced and slightly smarmy charm makes this Rake's "progress" all too believable. His arias are dispatched with a gorgeous, liquid old-school British lyric tenor sound that has just a touch of honey to it. Kennedy is not one of today's matinee idol tenors, and so to have him believing he's "all that" makes his journey all the more poignant. He's quite wonderful, really. His scene in Bedlam where he believes he is Adonis, is perfectly acted and sung with golden tone.

Quite simply, Laura Claycomb was born to sing Anne Truelove. Her voice is a mystery - at once light as a feather, but with a steel spine or core to it, there is an odd dichotmy of delicacy and strength that is entirely unique. She spins out these silvery high notes that float like gossamer - then she applies pressure to increase them to a size and volume not quite believable, but still entirely true to her sound. I'm grasping at words here, so, in a nutshell: she rocks. Her "No word from Tom" and the aria and cabaletta that follow are all of a piece, with an ease through the coloratura paces Stavinsky demands of her capping it all with a solid, ringing top C and - boy it's exciting! The scene where she discovers Tom's marriage to Baba - well, vocally and visually Claycomb, as, dejected and lost, she climbs back into her little red car - well, if she doesn't break your heart, you haven't got one. As good as she is in all of those scenes, it is when she returns to Tom in Bedlam that Claycomb's Anne shines brightest. That silvery, pure voice is now wedded to the heart of a woman who knows this love is lost and yet has nothing but compassion and tenderness to express. I think I've quite fallen in love with her. This is a remarkable performance.

Always a fan of William Shimell, I must admit to being just a bit surprised when he arrived on the scene for he looked remarkably like Jose van Dam - something I'd never noticed before. Shimell plays Nick Shadow to the hilt, the voice booming out nicely when called for, but more lyrical than many Shadows of recent vintage who seem to want to "boom" a lot more than really is necessary. All that Handel and Mozart singing shows nicely in this role. And what a great physical presence he is, agile and swift seemingly appearing out of nowhere. He's seductive, suave - even when dripping with black crude.

I was less excited about Dagmar Peckova's Baba - her heavily accented English and thick vibrato seeming to be a less than perfect match for Stravinsky's music, but she acts up a storm - in one of the more bizarre costumes to ever grace a stage (kinda creepy too).

The la Monnaie chorus and orchestra are led by their maestro (someone new to me), Kazushi Ono who gives a crisp, very classical feel to the score. The orchestra sounds wonderful and the chorus is quite amazing in all their music, particularly the Bedlam scene. Lepage's production is sure to cause a ruckus (it has) but for anyone who loves this opera as much as I do, this is a must have DVD of a thoroughly engaging, well thought out and immensely moving production. I loved every minute of it!

The disc is available from the OpusArte label and well worth owning.

(BTW - I cannot wait for Lepage to get his hands on the Met's new Ring. Some of the ideas I've read has been absolutely fascinating!)

p.

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS is often regarded as an esoteric work, too dry and intellectual for the average opera lover (like much of Stravinsky's music in general). This shouldn't be so: besides a moving morality fable by one of the 20th century's great poets, it offers music of both wit and a spiritual, crystalline Mozartean purity. All that is needed is a vibrant production to make this work better known, and the present production is poised to do just that. I'm not being fanciful when I say that it is the RAKE that I had always dreamed of.

The best known production of this opera is undoubtedly the 1975 version from Glyndebourne, in which David Hockney recreated the Hogarth engravings which inspired the opera. In the present production, director Robert Lepage "jazzes" with the opera (much as Stravinsky "jazzed" with 18th-century music), viewing the work from the standpoint of the period and place of its composition - mid 20th-century America. There are those who will say that the opera loses its meaning when separated from Hogarth and the 18th-century. I completely disagree. The neoclassicism of THE RAKE is not an 18th-century pastiche, but a revitalization of old forms and styles. Lepage's updating draws our attention away from the opera's 18th-century allusions and allows us to appreciate 1) the archetypal nature of the story, and 2) the music as music. Moreover, the parallels which Lepage has found between London and Las Vegas are so clever and apt that they elucidate rather than obscure the story. Not to mention that the stage designs are absolutely stunning to behold!

The outstanding cast is led by Andrew Kennedy and Laura Claycomb, sensational as Tom Rakewell and Anne Trulove. The RAKE is still a recent work in the grand scheme of things, but Kennedy and Clayomb sing it as if it were Mozart, undaunted by its coloratura, jagged melodic lines and off-kilter word settings which Stravinsky strews in their path. Their singing is shapely and inflected, they project the text with amazing clarity, and they embody their roles physically and psychologically. William Shimmel's oily black voice and dry, dagger-like declamation are a perfect match for the part of Nick Shadow. I was less enthused by Dagmar Peckova as Baba the Turk; her voice proves unwieldy in the coloratura, and her heavily accented English is distracting. Conductor Kazushi Ono's treatment of the tricky score is neither too indulgent nor too brisk and unsentimental - just right. Stravinsky's rhythms slink and swagger and his fascinating harmonies glisten in this terrific rendition.

This magical production of THE RAKE'S PROGRESS had me spellbound. Enjoy!

C'est l'opéra de Stravinski qui est le plus souvent représenté car c'est sans doute le plus en rapport avec notre époque : le pacte avec le Diable est de plus en plus d'actualité, même si la "naïveté" de l'être humain est de moins en moins évidente...
Ce spectacle de La Monnaie De Munt bénéficie d'une mise en scène formidable de Robert Lepage, et d'une pléiade d'acteurs-chanteurs absolument magnifiques, avec une mention particulière pour le ténor Andrew Kennedy.
Cette production allie le cirque de la vie, avec le mirage actuel de la télévision et de ses faux-semblants, fusionnant le fric et l'appêtit de gloire dont les excès ne pourront cependant pas occulter le triomphe de l'amour, de la fidélité et d'un certain bons sens, qui arrivent souvent à surmonter les terribles épreuves de la Tentation.