The Rake's Progress
Palais Garnier, Paris
November 30, 2024
December 4, 8, 10, 12, 17, 23 2024
What if we were the true architects of our own failures ? Tom Rakewell could have lived happily ever after had he been content with his mutual love for Ann Trulove. But poverty and ambition lead him down the wrong path: from brothel to gambling house, from absurd marriage to disgrace, ruin and madness, our hero, travels all the roads of vice and degradation.
Inspired by a series of moralist engravings by the painter William Hogarth, Igor Stravinsky created his first opera in English at La Fenice in Venice in 1951. With its neo-classical style, borrowing from 18th-century codes, the composer disappointed some of his contemporaries in search of the avant-garde. Yet it was a bold work, particularly in terms of rhythm, that the composer of The Rite of Spring created. Olivier Py's flamboyant staging sheds a bleak light on this Faustian opera haunted by temptation and blindness.