An opera in three acts
A fable by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman
Music by Stravinsky
In the Scottish Opera production
From the King's Theatre, Edinburgh

Act 1

Scottish Opera production of THE RAKE'S PROGRESS
An opera in three acts by Igor Stravinsky
Cast in order of singing
Anne Trulove Elizabeth Robson (soprano) Tom Rakewell Alexander Young (tenor) Trulove, Anne's father David Kelly (bass) Nick Shadow............Peter van der Bilt (bass) Mother Goose Johanna Peters (contralto) Baba the Turk Sona Cervena (mezzo-soprano) Sellem, an auctioneer... Francis Egerton (tenor) Keeper of the madhouse...Ronald Morrison (bass)
Scottish Opera Chorus Chorus-Master, Arthur Oldham
Scottish National Orchestra Leader, Sam Bor
Conductor, Alexander Gibson
Produced by Peter Ebert
The action takes place in eighteenth-century England
ACT 1 at 7.0
Scene 1 The garden of Trulove's house in the country. Spring
Scene 2 Mother Goose's brolhel in London. Summer
Scene 3 The garden of Trulove's house. Autumn
ACT 2 at 8.5*
Scene 1 The morning-room of Tom's house in London
Scene 2 The street in front of Tom's house
Scene 3 The morning-room or Tom's house
ACT 3 at9.5*
Scene 1 The morning-room of Tom's house
Scene 2 A churchyard
Scene 3 Bedlam
Edinburgh International Festival

For their first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival, Scottish Opera have happily chosen to give Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, one of the very few works written in the past forty years that has established itself firmly in the operatic repertory. Because it is basically a brilliant pastiche of classical, romantic, and comic opera, it is a piece that can-and has been-readily appreciated even by those who find much modern music uncongenial. The composer himself has said that' having chosen a period-piece subject, I decided-naturally, as it seemed to me-to assume the conventions of the period as well.' But Stravinsky has nevertheless heard these conventions with twentieth-century ears and bent them to his own aesthetic purpose, creating, of course, an entirely original conception that is exactly suited to the somewhat equivocal libretto of Auden and Kallman, poised as it is between an objective view of the characters and a very human sympathy with their predicament-an attitude, in fact, very much akin to Mozart's in Cosi fan tutte.
The librettists have likewise used Hogarth only as the basis of their inspiration. Tom Rakewell does not go to pieces as a just retribution, as in the drawings, for his guilty actions; he is simply the victim of circumstances who engages our sympathies because he seems so helpless. Even when he assigns his soul to Nick Shadow he does it from the upright motives so why should we condemn him? Then, when we have seen him go insane, Baba the Turk in the brittle Epilogue declares 'All men are mad' and the moral we must draw is perhaps that we, like Tom, can expect final redemption.
Whether the opera has a ' 'message' or is just an elaborate send-up of operatic convention, Stravinsky's music is in itself consistently enjoyable and perfectly tailored to the job in hand. The pastoral bliss of the first scene, the abandonment of Mother Goose's brothel, the controlled chaos of the auction, the intensity of the graveyard scene and the touching eloquence of the last duet between Tom and Anne followed by her tender lullaby show that the composer - like Mozart in Cosi - fell in love with his characters in the act of creating them and their ambience in musical terms.