[Met Performance] CID:164710



The Rake's Progress
Metropolitan Opera House, Tue, January 26, 1954




The Rake's Progress (7)
Igor Stravinsky | Chester Kallmann/W.H. Auden
Tom Rakewell
Eugene Conley

Anne Trulove
Hilde G?den

Nick Shadow
Mack Harrell

Baba the Turk
Blanche Thebom

Trulove
Norman Scott

Mother Goose
Martha Lipton

Sellem
Paul Franke

Keeper
Osie Hawkins


Conductor
Alberto Erede


Director
George Balanchine

Designer
Horace Armistead

Stage Director
Dino Yannopoulos





The Rake's Progress received two performances this season.

Review 1:

Review of Robert Sabin in Musical America

The season's first performance of Stravinsky's opera was, as a fellow-critic aptly remarked, "a triumph for Fritz Reiner". For the precision, the movement, the delicate adjustment of orchestral and vocal "values" that marked the performances of "The Rake's Progress" under Mr. Reiner last season were sadly lacking in this one. Alberto Erede conducted the score with the sensitive feeling that rarely deserts him, but both the singers and the orchestra seemed to be in doubt at times precisely where the beat was and what the tempo should be, which was his fault, not theirs. Furthermore, the stage direction had grown looser. Trulove, Anne, Tom, and Nick Shadow stood about the stage in Act I, Scene 1, obviously waiting for the point in which they join in a quartet; the ladies and gentlemen at Mother Goose's in Scene 2 seemed uncomfortable, which they would not have been, under the circumstances. Throughout the evening. one had a feeling of incertitude in the action.

A word of praise should go to the principals, however, for making the most of the emotional and dramatic elements in Stravinsky's music. Mack Harrell (the only one who succeeded in making every word clear throughout the evening) made Nick Shadow at once a more sinister and a more convincing figure than he did last season. Eugene Conley was profoundly touching in Tom Rakewell's mad scenes at the close of the opera and Hilde G?den brought a deeper note of compassion into Anne's poignant lullaby and farewell in the last scene in Bedlam. Blanche Thebom luxuriated in the flamboyant antics of Baba the Turk, and Norman Scott, as Trulove; Martha Lipton, as Mother Goose; and Paul Franke, as Sellem, gave devoted performances.

The truth (ever plainer) is that "The Rake's Progress" is not an "operatic" opera, despite Stravinsky's aping of classic models. The score is a marvel of musical craftsmanship; it contains passages of great emotional power and exquisite beauty, especially of harmony. But there is no dramatic continuity. One cannot sustain one's interest in the happenings on the stage or in the characters because for long stretches the music ceases to be dramatically convincing and the libretto indulges in metaphysical asides and byplay that kill the tension. This work will always command the respect of musicians and it will probably always be able to attract a special audience. But I could not blame the audience at the Metropolitan on Jan, 26 for feeling restless and leaving in part before the end, even though I remained to enjoy the work for its abstract musical values and even though the final pages are the dramatically finest and most luminous of the whole score.



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