APO Rake Rights 40-Year Wrong

APO Rake Rights 40-Year Wrong

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra gives opera lovers the rare chance to hear one of the great 20th century masterworks at this year’s Trusts Community Foundation Opera in Concert.

Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress has not been performed anywhere in New Zealand since its Australasian debut in 1969. That production was staged only in Wellington, so Rake makes its first Auckland appearance at the 9 August concert.

Rake springs from Stravinsky’s neo-classical period and contains some of the composer’s most exuberant music. While he was influenced by Mozart and the Italian operatic tradition, Rake features all the dancing rhythms, clever harmonies and impressive orchestration associated with Stravinsky.

The text, by the great poet WH Auden with Chester Kallman, is considered the finest libretto written in English, and charts the misadventures of Tom Rakewell, a young man too easily led astray.

The role of Tom is sung by the outstanding Australian tenor Andrew Goodwin, who has worked extensively in Russia, notably with the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre.

Two of New Zealand’s most celebrated singers take the key roles of Anne Trulove and Nick Shadow. Soprano Madeleine Pierard is a regular performer with the APO, and appears later in the year to sing in Mahler’s Symphony No.4; while bass-baritone Paul Whelan joins the APO for the first time since his star 2011 turn as Wotan in Wagner’s Das Rheingold.

The Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus, directed by John Rosser, fills Stravinsky’s prescription for “Whores and Roaring Boys, Servants, Citizens and Madmen”, while Eckehard Stier, Music Director of Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, takes the podium.

“It’s astonishing that The Rake’s Progress has not been performed in New Zealand for more than 40 years,” says APO Chief Executive Barbara Glaser, “and it’s exciting for us to put that right on 9 August. This is one of the key 20th century operas and we’re delighted to have a cast more than capable of doing justice to this sparkling work.”

WHO: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Eckehard Stier

WHAT: Trusts Community Foundation Opera in Concert: Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.

WHEN: 7.30pm, Friday 9 August

WHERE: Auckland Town Hall

CAST:

Andrew Goodwin – Tom Rakewell

Madeleine Pierard – Anne Trulove

Paul Whelan – Nick Shadow

Liane Keegan – Baba the Turk

Joshua Bloom – Father Trulove

Andrew Glover – Sellem

Helen Medlyn – Mother Goose

Nicholas Dinopoulos – Keeper of the Madhouse

The Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus Director John Rosser

DID YOU KNOW?

- The Rake’s Progress is based on the series of eight paintings ‘A Rake’s Progress’, painted by William Hogarth in 1732-33. Stravinsky saw them in Chicago in 1947.

- Stravinsky’s friend, the writer Aldous Huxley, suggested Auden as librettist. Auden’s only previous libretto was for Britten’s Paul Bunyan (1941), which had been a commercial failure.

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