The Rake's Progress was born of a series of painterly images. Stravinsky drew on an exhibition he saw in 1947 of work by William Hogarth, the 18th-century English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist credited with pioneering western sequential art. Hogarth's work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic-striplike series he termed "modern moral subjects". According to the Dwutygodnik.com, Stravinsky built his sequence of musical images to share his thoughts about the crisis of contemporary music.
The Rake’s Progress libretto was developed by poets W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman from the eight paintings and etchings by Hogarth. It depicts the downfall of Tom Rakewell, who abandons his fiancée and leaves for London, only to quickly lose his fortune, marry a bearded woman, sell his soul to the devil and end by losing his mind, locked away in a mental asylum. The opera enjoyed its premiere in the Venetian Teatro La Fenice.
Krzysztof Warlikowski’s staging departs radically from the 18th-century setting of the piece. The Polish director instead takes the audience on a tour of mid-20th century America, staging the plot in Andy Warhol’s New York City studio. The premiere in 2010 of his The Rake’s Progress was very well received by the German audience. Polish theatre critic and journalist Joanna Derkaczew described Warlikowski’s production in her review for the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. She recounted the way in which The Rake’s Progress interrogates fantasies of power, the price to be paid for success and the shortcuts taken to achieve fame:
In Warlikowski’s version one can sense a longing and also a fascination. An old elegant man, wearing a smoking suit sits in the audience and observes as the plot unfolds. It is Rakewell himself... [...] What is he thinking as he looks onto his scenic double, who betrays, allows himself to be seduced, looses Anna, the love of his life? [...] His face, blown-up to monstrous sizes by the camera and screens, reveals nothing but exhaustion. From the opposite side of the stage, the performance is viewed by a chorus made to look like a suburban theatre audience. [...] They imitate the actors’ gestures. They catch onto bodies during love scenes. One views a peep-show or video-projections in a night club in this way, but not the opera.
Will Robin, a critic, performer and scholar, reviewed the Warlikowski production on his seatedovation blog:
The Rake’s Progress is a game, a charade, operatic form as series of masks, expression disguised as classicism disguised as drama. Theatricality layers upon itself. Its most brutal, most pained moments are relieved from their burden by the incessant reminder that everything is fake, and thus ephemeral. But the gravity of those moments, the way that the heart tears when we hear the young Ann proclaim "I will go to him," or witness the deranged, embittered Tom lament his lost love, ultimately linger. The power of the work is not in its clever games, but in the way in which emotion constantly manages to overcome them.
The German staging features Jan Martinik, Adriana Kucerova and Stephan Rugamer in the main roles. Berlin critics applauded the terrific team of singers as well as the simplicity of the stage design by Małgorzata Szczęśniak, Warlikowski’s long-time collaborator. The light direction is by Felice Ross.
The Rake's Progress, Igor Stravinsky’s opera in three acts with an epilogue, is staged by Krzysztof Warlikowski at the Berlin Staatsoper on the 9th of March 2013, with repeat performances on the 14th and 16th of March.
Anna Legierska, translated and edited by Paulina Schlosser. Sources: Berlin Staatsoper, Dwutygodnik.com, Polskie Radio, Gazeta Wyborcza