Progress Report

Peter Burwasser

The Rake's ProgressThe Curtis Institute of Music Opera Theater, Fri., April 19, Centennial Hall

Opera is meant to be a wedding of all the arts, and the challenge for the composer, and especially the performers, is to explore the individual visual, literary and musical elements to the fullest. There is often a bias, among both the producers of opera and the general public, toward the musical side, but for a performance of Stravinsky’s late opera The Rake’s Progress, the young artists of the Curtis Institute of Music Opera Theater, as cleverly directed by Chas Rader-Shieber, instead emphasized the theatrical.

This is completely appropriate for this work. Stravinsky's orchestral writing is brilliantly assembled, as one would expect from one of the musical giants of the 20th century, but in general the score sounds as if the great man was operating on auto-pilot, with astringent, sing-songy melodies strung over oom-pah bass lines. Stretches sound lifted from previous works, including the ballet Le Baiser de la Fée and Symphony of Psalms.

Stravinsky seems to have deliberately set out to avoid the slightest allusion to 19th century opera conventions, if he is not outright mocking them.

The burden of the work's effectiveness thus falls unduly upon the librettist, and it is carried magnificently by W. H. Auden, the great British poet, who has reinterpreted the Faust legend with an arresting mix of the high-brow and the grotesque. For English-speaking audiences, Auden's words are the stars of this opera. The character of Baba the Turk, the bearded lady, is one of the most unusual and colorful in the repertoire. It is not surprising that some of Stravinsky's most memorable music is for Baba, including the delicious mock-glorious fanfare that ends the second scene in Act 2.

Auden's delight in puns and classical allusions are like a candy shop for Rader-Shieber and his set designer, David Evans Morris, who have updated the original 18th century setting to modern suburbia and city.

Rader-Shieber always presents opera in a precise and thoughtful way, and this production spilled over with symbolism. Notable was the use of grass as a medium of growth and life, with the "rake" travelling across it. In the final scene, the grass actually blanketed the rake, as he cowered in bedlam.

This student production was realized with a vibrant and seductive panache, with especially strong work by Matthew Rose, as Nick Shadow. Ian Robertson led the pit orchestra to play with bubbly momentum.

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