Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress”

Modernist genius composer Igor Stravinsky based an opera on the eight print series “A Rake’s Progress” by artist William Hogarth, who satirized the politically and socially corrupt milieu of 18th-century London. Stravinsky engaged poets W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman to write the libretto and the opera, “The Rake’s Progress,” debuted in 1951.

Hogarth’s prints are on exhibit at the Blanton Museum of Art. And in tandem with the exhibit, the museum is screening the 2007 production of Stravinsky’s “The… Show more Rake’s Progress” by Brussels’ La Monnaie–De Munt opera. The edgy production by Robert Lepage re-imagines the neo-classical morality tale as taking place in sin city 1950s Las Vegas with glittering neon-filled streets and lonely desert landscapes.

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