Is the road to hell just as slippery a slope in the 1970s as it was 200 years earlier? Indeed it is, West Bay Opera’s current production of Igor Stravinsky’s only opera tells us in this fable of a young man’s get-rich-quick life in the fast lane.
The Rake’s Progress (ever downward) goes forth at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto for five performances through Sunday, June 4. It’s a satisfying work that has stood the test of time since its 1951 premiere under the composer’s baton in Venice.
The original opera is the pure invention of the coming together of some world class talents: Stravinsky, now acknowledged as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, joined forces with poet W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, whose libretto was spun from taking the tale so acidly portrayed in eight cartoons by 18th century London satirist William Hogarth.
West Bay’s creative team decided that there is just as much validity to the tale in 1970s London’s scenes of excess and venality. Director Jonathon Field found lots of parallels to human nature then and now. His vision is brought to life by a cast of talented young singers and a strongly supportive orchestral contingent led by WBO’s Music Director Mary Chun.
Maestra Chun gave the score just enough of an off-beat contemporary musical flavor, making the Mozart-like overtones just a bit discordant and atonal. The music also gave some strange reshapings to the poetry. There was, however, no disguising the simple parable that gaining an unearned and undeserved fortune can lead to ruin, madness and death. At least in opera.
Making successful debuts at West Bay are Rhoslyn Jones, with a big, buttery soprano voice, and tenor Gerald Seminatore, whose English accents must have been honed in his apprentice years at Glyndebourne and Aldeborough. He has a crystalline high range, especially in the second and third acts.
Ms. Jones portrayed Anne Trulove, the trusting, faithful girl left behind in the country. Mr. Seminatore’s Tom Rakewell starts out also as a bit of a naive country bumpkin. He dreams however of getting rich without the nuisance of a steady job, which bothers Anne’s father, performed by veteran baritone Douglas Nagel as the rustic English copy of the farmer in Grant Wood’s American Gothic.
Along comes Nick Shadow, the devil’s henchman, sung elegantly by Kirk Eichelberger in a powerful bass-baritone. Shadow enlists as Rakewell’s guide to fortune and debauchery as his unpaid servant for a year and a day. A bow to Gounod’s Faust and Mephistopheles as well as Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Leporello. Doom comes on apace.
The action then moves to a London brothel as Mother Goose, performed by Ariela Morgenstern looking like the star of the bordello rather than its madam, introduces Tom to pleasures of the flesh. Here the WBO team comes up with a staging gimmick. After the lovers are tucked in bed, the scene reverts to the country again and the virginal bed of the faithful Anne, who vows to rescue her man.
A bored and rich Tom is then convinced to marry a dazzling freak show personality called Baba the Turk. As played by mezzo Carla Lopez-Speziale, Baba is a haughty and wealthy celebrity who browbeats the bewildered Tom.
In other productions, Baba turns out to be the circus bearded lady. She seems to have only half of a small moustache in this one. Tom’s gambling addiction brings financial ruin and all of the palatial possessions go under the hammer of Sellem, the auctioneer, a role over-played by WBO veteran Michael Mendelsohn.
Nick Shadow prepares Tom’s grave but our hero escapes this fate by correctly guessing three cards sportingly offered by Nick. The Queen of Hearts reminds Tom of Anne and the hope that a good woman can rescue any fallen man. That love saves his soul from the devil but can’t save his life. His ultimate end is in a mental institution, where he gets electroshock to purge him of the notion that he is Adonis to Anne’s Venus. Alas, he perishes from the treatments.
An epilogue, also in the mode of Mozart, brings all of the characters back to opine:
“For idle hands and hearts and minds,
the Devil finds a work to do.”
Overall, the Rake’s Progress is an intriguing work to experience. It is hard to inject the kind of pathos and emotional empathy one might expect in such a tale. Nonetheless it is well worth the three-plus hours invested by the audience.
INFORMATION
“The Rake’s Progress” by Igor Stravinsky will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, June 2 and 3; and 2 p.m. Sunday, June 4, at the Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road in Palo Alto. For tickets, call 424-9999; or order online at wbopera.org.
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