Robert Lepage stages Stravinsky's Rake's Progress
(June 2007)
The visionary Canadian theatre director Robert Lepage has created a new production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress which was unveiled at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels in May, conducted by Kazushi Ono.
The staging travels on in coming seasons to Opéra National de Lyon, San Francisco Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and the Teatro Real in Madrid. The Sunday Times described how Lepage “transplants Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress to the fleshpots of 1950s Las Vegas — and the gamble pays off admirably”.
“In the Monnaie programme, Lepage justifies his updating by stating that ‘Stravinsky jazzed with Hogarth’s ideas in the same manner as he jazzed with baroque music’… The ingénu cowboy, Tom, makes his progress from a little house on the prairie to the dazzling neon-lit vision of hell that the graveyard scene becomes here, set in a disused gaming house… A glittering, cinematic gallery of tableaux vivants inspired by the early days of television.”
The Sunday Times
“In a series of set pieces or sketches, we see Tom go from a denim-clad farm boy in a scene reminiscent of Oklahoma to an encounter on hot pink satin sheets with Marlene Dietrich-like seductress Mother Goose. He then moves on to Sunset Boulevard swimming pools and movie-star fame before landing in a clinically white madhouse.”
Bloomberg News
> Further information on Work: The Rake's Progress
Photo: Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at the Théatre de la Monnaie Brussels (image: Johan Jacobs)
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