The Rake's Progress

• Trulove ( bass)
• Anne, his daughter (Soprano)
• Tom Rakewell (tenor )
• Nick Shadow (baritone )
• Mother Goose (Alt )
• Baba called the Türkenbab (mezzo- soprano)
• Sellem, auctioneer (Tenor)
• Keeper of the madhouse ( bass)
• Choir: Servant. Prostitutes and raucous lads. Citizens. lunatic

The Rake 's Progress is an opera in three acts by Igor Stravinsky.

The libretto by WH Auden and Chester Kallman. As a template for the opera served the painting and engraving series A Rake 's Progress ( " The career or life of a libertine " ) the English painter William Hogarth.

Stylistic position

The plot contains allusions to various known operas and motives:

A young man who takes up his inheritance in the big city and his lover forgets (Le Villi by Giacomo Puccini ); a prayer with horn sounds, reminiscent of Fidelio; the Faust motif; the idea of the superman; the journey through hell to save her lover with vocals ( Orpheus ), and Venus and Adonis.

The work is the culmination of Stravinsky's neoclassical period into.

Formation

During a visit to the exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute met Stravinsky on May 2, 1947 the painting cycle A Rake's Progress by William Hogarth. The eight engravings with their realistic accurate representation of the London casinos, brothels and asylums inspired him to compose the opera The Rake 's Progress.

Both in Hogarth's picture series as well as in Stravinsky's opera the story of the playboy Tom Rakewell is told that gambled away his money, women nibbled, ruined himself and his fellow men, and eventually ends up in psychiatry. Hogarth's engraving series appeared in 1735, after a short time before eight paintings were created.