See the Rake's Progress at the Royal Opera House because it IS different. Robert Lepage the director transposes the action to Hollywood in the early 50's. This is valid enough in theory because Stravinsky loved the US and the moral story in The Rake's P is universal. So the references to "Oklahoma !" were apt enough. I liked the idea of Tom's magic machine as a TV set showing a 50's kid in cowboy suit stealing a packet of tacky Wonderbread ! Certainly this production is a colorful extravaganza - sit well back up in the rafters for best effect and avoid the flashingneon if you're epilectic. But a little can go a long way..... To use Lepage's Hollywood analogy, this was a shoot out between opera and staging and the staging won.
The problem is that this opera borders on "chamber" where the devil is in the detail (sorry Nick Shadow !). Every word of that wonderful libretto crackles with arch deviousness which Stravinsky's setting exploits deliciously. And those neo- classical baroque references are there for a purpose. This is music to listen to if you don't believe harpsichords can do wild atonal dissonance !
So the extravaganza/spectacular approach overwhelms after a while. Had the orchestra fought back maybe it might have worked but it seemed as seduced as Tom Rakewell by the glitz. What this needed was acerbic irony and savage wit, to bring out the tension sparked by Stravinsky's mix of formality and modernism. Even nice guy Haitink was whippped into lucid starkness with David Hockney's Glyndeboune production of 1975 - sharp black and white, surreal and no compromise !
Good enough singing - Sally Matthews sings with tough conviction so she's more than an airhead bimbette but John Relyea was divine ! Which is an odd thing to say about The Devil, but that's why he's so convincing. What a voice ! Once heard this is a voice you don't forget ! I first heard him 7 years ago in Enescu's Oedipe at Edinburgh when he was relatively unknown, where he "made" the opera come alive. He was outstanding ! And he's still under 40.
But again, the singers had to compete with the staging and were outdrawn. Significantly LePage seems to think of Baba the Turk as a kind of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. But Baba is quite the opposite. She's the one person in the whole opera that doesn't stay deluded long. Her role is crucial to the whole morality. She's the counterweight to Nick Shadow. He's seductive, she's ugly, he's persuasive, she's unloved. But he's the devil and she's a good soul who proves it by being kind to Ann while he's out to destroy Tom. Note, the devil loses the game of cards and goes to hell. So Baba may babble but Baba survives !
A lot goes right in this production, and audiences will love it "as" theatre. But it's carried away with the thrill of its own success. This was the Cold War after all. That cosy conformity was shaped against a background of paranoia and danger. For a moment Lepage does hint at things unseen, like when a "mushroom cloud" rises from the floor. But it turns into a movie star trailer. Stravinsky, Auden and Kallman were writing a moral fable, so without th harsh edge of moral dilemma, the opera can fall flat. They were writing against a background of McCarthy and the Hollywood Trials after all, when artists could be destroyed because they didn't buy the materialism this opera condemns. The auctioneer scene is crucial - you can't buy values any more than you can buy the nobility that comes with the Roman bust whatever the auctioneer may suggest.
More later but here's an interview with John Relyea
http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2008/Jan-Jun08/relyea.htm
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