THE RAKE'S PROGRESS / PROGRAM / Garnier / November 2024

Description

What if we were the true architects of our own failures ? Tom Rakewell could have lived happily ever after had he been content with his mutual love for Ann Trulove. But poverty and ambition lead him down the wrong path: from brothel to gambling house, from absurd marriage to disgrace, ruin and madness, our hero, manipulated by the evil Nick Shadow, travels all the roads of vice and degradation.

Inspired by a series of moralist engravings by the painter William Hogarth, Igor Stravinsky created his first opera in English at La Fenice in Venice in 1951. With its neo-classical style, borrowing from 18th-century codes, the composer disappointed some of his contemporaries in search of the avant-garde.

Yet it was a bold work, particularly in terms of rhythm, that the composer of The Rite of Spring created. Olivier Py's flamboyant staging sheds a bleak light on this Faustian opera haunted by temptation and blindness.