Reviewed by James Karas
The Glimmerglass Festival has staged a powerful and stunning production of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress during the 50th anniversary season at the Alice Busch Opera Theatre in Cooperstown, New York. The production features a strong cast directed by Eric Sean Fogel and the Glimmerglass Festival Opera and Chorus conducted by Joseph Colaneri.
The Rake’s Progress was a series of paintings by the eighteenth-century English painter Thomas Hogarth who charted the life of Tom Rakewell, “the rake.” Progress is meant ironically because Tom went from the heir to a large fortune to a life of luxury, waste, prostitution and loss of everything including his sanity. The aptly named Anne Trulove, the beautiful woman that he loved and abandoned continued to love him to the bitter end.
Igor Stravinsky was quite taken by the paintings and he decided to turn them into an opera. The libretto based on Hogarth’s paintings was prepared by the august W. H. Auden and Chester Simon Kallman and was first performed in 1951 in Venice.
The Glimmerglass Festival production features Canadian tenor Adrian Kramer as Tom Rakewell. (The Glimmerglass Festival Program says he is from New York, New York! This is not the time to make mistakes like that.) He is from Toronto). Regardless of his origin, he turns in an energetic performance physically and especially vocally. He fulfills Rakewell’s complex role with superb singing and acting through the many stages of the rake’s life. It was a delight to hear and watch him
The lovely Anne is the antithesis of Rakewell and I pay tribute to soprano Lydia Grindatto. She plays the faithful and pure lover of Rakewell and pursues him until his bitter end. She sings the arias and duets with beauty and splendid vocal finesse. She makes the most difficult phrase appear simple, natural, and beautiful.
And we have the Mephistopheles of the opera, Nick Shadow (baritone Aleksey Bogdanov). He has the attire and manners of an English gentleman and tells the lazy lout Rakewell that he has inherited a large fortune. He invites him to enjoy the life that money can provide and Rakewell follows him to London to a “better life” in a brothel. Bogdanov has a sonorous and convincing baritone voice and manages to control Rakewell to the bitter end when he asks him for his soul in payment for his services. A marvelous performance by Bogdanov.
The first step that Rakewell takes on his way down is at the brothel where he meets Baba the Turk (mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel). She has a big voice and a pronounced presence on the stage. She may be considered nasty but she has, as they say, about members of her profession (and I mean prostitutes and not singers), a heart of gold. Baba marries Rakewell but when Anne shows up, she speaks well of him. I have no doubt that Deborah too has a heart of gold and she gives a grand performance.
Anne’s father Trulove (bass Marc Webster) sings with gorgeous sonority and sensitivity as the concerned parent who finds a job for the wastrel Rakewell. He has a relatively small roll but he makes the most of it. Well done.
The set by John Conklin is minimalist and unrealistic. The lighting by Robert Wierzel features generous use of projections illustrating certain events. They do the job. In the opening scene we see a cutout of the Venus de Milo statue, the one of the goddess of love with the missing arms. It disappears when Rakewell goes astray but at the end of the opera he thinks he is Adonis, the beautiful youth that Venus loved passionately.
Director Fogel handles the complex plot and characters with an eye to detail and drama. He gives us a coherent and splendidly done production.
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The Rake’s Progress by Igor Stravinsky is being performed six times until August 15, 2025, at the Alice Busch Opera Theater as part of the Glimmerglass Festival, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information at www.glimmerglass.org/
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