Just before the end of this landmark comeback season at the Metropolitan Opera, the slot has returned.
That lock? Connoisseurs know it as the run just before the company’s summer break, when the Met programs a brief revival – three, maybe four performances – of a slightly off-the-beaten-track title. In the past they have included works by Janacek (in May 2020 it would have been “Kat’a Kabanova”), Britten’s “Billy Budd”, Poulenc’s “Dialogues des Carmélites”. It’s catnip for opera lovers, a dessert after months of partying.
In the spring of 2015, the slot was taken over by Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress.” And in the spring of 2022 it will be that time again. An understated take on this refined work, it opened on Monday and will run for three more performances, through June 11.
The libretto, by WH Auden and Chester Kallman, is based on a series of paintings by Hogarth about a young man who squanders his inheritance and goes mad. The opera adds a Mephistophelian figure who seduces Tom Rakewell from the straight and narrow with riches and women – for a price.
Stravinsky’s score evokes the 18th century of Hogarth, Pergolesi and Mozart, imbuing the breezy, cooling-water clarity of the time with the angular rhythms and sharp harmonies of the mid-20th century. The music may seem generously nostalgic at first glance – until you open your ears to the shocking unsteadiness and darker ambiguities.
The conductor, Susanna Mälkki, memorablely led the orchestra in passages of eerie and tenderness, such as in the nighttime glow of the prelude to the graveyard scene in the last act. Moments of grandeur and bursting passages of lively bumps, however, felt like they were still settling in on Monday.
The tenor Ben Bliss, as Rakewell, was smaller than some singers from the start, his tone clear and endearing. As in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” earlier this season, soprano Golda Schultz’s voice was silky and soft like Anne Trulove, Tom’s beloved friend, and she managed to project innocence without naivety. And on her corporate debut as Baba the Turk, the bearded diva Tom marries, mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis had a lively presence and grounded sound, elegant in her courtesy to Anne.
Bass-baritone Christian Van Horn added another devil to his Met repertoire after playing the title role in Boito’s “Mefistofele” in 2018, singing Nick Shadow with firm, uncomplicated resonance, though not much seductive innuendo. There were stylish twists in minor roles from James Creswell (Anne’s father), Eve Gigliotti (Mrs Mother Goose), Tony Stevenson (Sellem auctioneer) and Paul Corona (the asylum administrator).
With its blue skies and sharply angular cityscape, Jonathan Miller’s production, first seen here in 1997, is truly 1990s Met: simple, stylized, a little odd, with surreal plays of scale. (See also Miller’s 1991 ‘Kat’a Kabanova’ staging, with its houses the size of dolls, and the story-high nymphs of Elijah Moshinsky’s 1993 ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’.)
At 25, the show is looking a bit battered. But the action is clear – and, as always, the lullaby Anne sings to Tom in the insane asylum towards the end tears the heart, a blessing over a troubled man and a troubled world.
The progress of the rake
Until June 11 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org.