…and what Progress!!
Just back from Glyndebourne to see the Festival Tour production of The Rakes Progress – the one with the Hockney sets and costumes.
First produced in 1975 at Glyndebourne there are few (any other?) 46 year old productions still in the Glyndebourne repertoire – but the design make this evergreen – the Hockney sets and costumes are a character in themselves – and worth keeping even if they require scene changes (and therefore stoppages) which are now very old fashioned.
But they create a ‘look’ which is unmistakeable (and a fine homage to Hogarth), together with a plethora of visual jokes.
The Stravinsky score leans into tone poems and the Auden and Kallman libretto into blank verse, which need getting into – but once you do – well, it’s worth it. You need a more than competent orchestra of course (and the Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra is) and some fine voiced singers (Nardus Williams as Anne Truelove particularly so) – but the design is such a consistent visual treat that you are anyway swept along, such that the Auction Scene – and the Bedlam scene as well – are mesmerising.
Booked up at Glyndebourne (some availability on Saturday) but it is touring, to Canterbury, Milton Keynes, Norwich and Liverpool. I hope it stays in the repertoire for ever, but, as ever, these could be its last outings… (It wasn’t, but, following the 2023 Art’s Council funding cut, there will be no more Glyndebourne tours! – 😭)