The Rake's Progress

Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress

Stravinsky’s wacky neoclassical masterpiece, which tracks a young rake’s entertaining fall from grace with Mozartian wit and brilliance, receives its belated African premiere in a staging by the creative team responsible for 2010’s uproarious Il viaggio a Reims.

A chance encounter with William Hogarth’s famous paintings at an art exhibition in Chicago in 1947 inspired Stravinsky to commission the libretto for his first English-language opera. His accomplished collaborators, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, soon concocted a brilliant variation on Hogarth’s moral narrative: after mysteriously inheriting a fortune, Tom Rakewell leaves his sweetheart Anne Trulove, and begins a hard-partying ‘progress’ through the brothels and mansions of London, which costs him his fortune, his true love and ultimately his sanity.

One of the most performed operas written since World War II, The Rake’s Progress will receive its belated African premiere in this co-production by Cape Town Opera and the UCT Opera School, in a staging which reunites the creative team behind 2010’s colourful Il viaggio a Reims. Under the spirited baton of Kamal Khan, an imaginative new production by Matthew Wild and Kobus Rossouw will feature a witty mash-up of 18th century and contemporary imagery, with choreography by Sean Bovim.

The Rake’s Progress opens at the Baxter on August 30th @ 19h30

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Please note casting and dates are subject to change without prior notice