Stravinsky - The Rake's Progress - Prelude, start of opera

[musoderelict]

Is it that 20th Century (and beyond) has nothing new to say, that we have to go back to older music and add a few wrong notes here and there?

[itoohill]

Hadley had such a nice tenor voice. But I prefer this aria to be sung; He declaimed the majority of this.

And I appreciate his liveliness and energy, but... simpler delivery in opera is usually better, IMHO.

[papoocanada]

so sad to see Hadley so lively and now so dead...RIP

[TudorTulok]

Stravinsky is for the future (meaning now present), not for the past (meaning Classical music)

[RogueRotting360]

@TudorTulok This is a piece that looks both to the future and past. That's why it's called neoclassicism, and not simply classicism.

[pagerbear]

Poor Jerry Hadley. RIP. I wish he were still on the opera scene.

[StartsWorld]

this is intensely beautiful music.

[ad80ad]

Stravinsky was a great composer, but to define "beautiful" this music is provocative...better to say that is beautifully perfect to express sarcasm, horrid and absurd. For me beautifullnes is Mozart, or Wagner, or Berg for example.

[ntertainer333]

You do realize that Stravinsky referred to scores of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutti when he wrote this opera right? There's your Mozart right there.

[ad80ad]

ahahahaha: there is THE SARCASTIC IRRIVERENT DISSACRATION OF MOZART. Mozart is another thing my Gooood: like to say that Marcel Duchamp who put moustaches on "Monna Lisa" was insipired by Leonardo da Vinci. Can you understand the incommensurable difference in aesthetics and poetics? To do art, and to dissacrate art are two different job. If you can't hear the aesthetic and emotional difference between Mozart and Stravinsky you have not ears and not HEART my dear.

[JAYJAY1000000]

What a damned shame this need to put art in useless competitions. A bit like asking if you prefer your brother to your sister, chicken or beef, etc... It's a bit immature. I happen to love all of Mozart's work, and my feelings are as strong for The Rake's progress. Thank God I do not have to chose between them. Having said that, I would like to point out that Stravinsky's music certainly requires a more trained ear, which may be lacking in your case.

[Leomerya12]

I agree with you, although, truth be told, Mozart's music is actually deceptively complex.

[adlc80]

May be your ears are trained, but I doubt your brain is as trained as your ears. I don't talking about Beauty (in an academic sense). I'm talking about poetics: Stravinsky poetic is certainly NOT to create beautifullness or an elegant and intense feeling like Mozart or Webern, but to joke with language, absurd, opera conventions in a sarcastic way. Schoenberg Variations op. 31 are not "beautiful" in an academi sense, but it is a SERIOUS piace. Rake's is a masterpiece, but a drawing-room joke.

[ntertainer333]

Buy a dictionary and a music history book.

[adlc80]

Hearing Stravinsky without take in account the amount of self-irony, pretence, dissacration of academism (the "official" form of the opera) and sarcasm contained in this operation is like to reduce Stravinsky as a stupid puppet, and means to hear music like a fool without any knowledge of the cultural meanings beyond o masterpiece. Stravinsky was a great artist, not a convent girl. Stravinsky is a member of Paris Avantgarde 1920 like Cocteau and c. Buy an history book and train your brain.

[JAYJAY1000000]

I'm sorry but what a big load of pompous nonsense!!

[adlc80]

So, differences in music don't mean nothing for you...Tristan und Isolde, Cosi fan tutte, La Boheme, Norma, Lulu. Capriccio (1942) Rake's Progress (1951)....the same thing. Well done boy!

[ad80ad]

Rather, I think the 99% of the value of this work is the provocative and deliberate dissacration of obsolete "opera mythologies", while the Expressionists built an entirely new style and language. The two phenomenon are strictly correlated. If you take it "seriously", Rake's becomes the biggest product of human stupidity in the history of music, like to take UBU ROI as the "Hamlet". Do you HEAR the recitatives?

[JAYJAY1000000]

Again I disagree, what Stravinsky did with Rake is simply known as classicism; a homage ,if you will ,to Monteverdi, Gluck and Mozart, (he used the exact same instruments as in Cosi), hence the recitatives. The work is so rich it holds light sarcastic moments as well as pure depth and ultimatly pathos at the end.

[ad80ad]

@JAYJAY1000000

So you don't feel at all the sarcastic, cerebral part of this music...you just hear a Mozart piece, then rake's and you say to yourself:"Oh...just another sweetened and euphonic Mozart remake, a perfect, polished example of Classical Beauty, like the David of Michelangelo". You are very original my dear...I'm sure the most part of people here feels the eccentricity of a Picasso more than any "homage" to classical equilibrium ;-)

[ad80ad]

@ad80ad First of all: Classicism is based on CONSONANCE. Here DISSONANCE predominates, so I don't know how your fantasy can hear Mozart here if this style lacks the FIRST element of classicism: the rules of tonal harmony. And then: it's evident that here there many elements related to XVIII century, but they are TOTALLY UPSET by the "cubist" crazy genius of Stravinsky that, by definition, is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to any sort of "classical moderation".

[ad80ad]

@ad80ad These are the exact motivations because ALL histories of music talk about Stravinsky as a "parodistic" composer, not a "manneristic" composer. And of course this is why Stravinsky is considered one of the great geniuses of XX century and not a second order "imitator" of Mozart, even in his Neoclassical works like this one.

[Flatliner0452]

you really don't get it do you.

[markvking]

I rented this on Netflix where I discovered and loved Monte Pederson's voice, looking forward to hearing more of him, only to find he had died of cancer several years ago. What a shame and what a nice voice. RIP

[myaskovsky2002]

I love this version, please tell me which one is it in order to buy it.

Martin

[lucpebo]

i like only the firtly five minutes of this Opera.

[karnak767]

It's hard to believe he has been gone a year already. He was really a beautiful man.

[BelCantoBoy]

Does anybody have Tom's recit and aria "Here I stand, my constitution sound...Since it is not by merit...."

??????

If you do, please post it, I can't find a recording and especially a video recording anywhere of that aria.

[BelCantoBoy]

wow, talk about speaking too soon. how stupid of me. nevermind, that was dumb. please, have a good laugh at something so thoughtless. Sorry guys!

[Jafuet]

i would prefer that scene have some relationship with Hogarth pictures :(

[sylarna]

beautiful opera, shite mise en scene in this case

[kmostrach]

Thanks for posting this! I really enjoyed it. Where and when was this performance? Nice to see Jerry in happier times.

[1calaf]

Very good...Rest in peace Mr Hadley!

[rjr1967]

it's great! Can you post the haunting "guide me o moon"?

[MrCafiero]

What year was this?

[hightenor123]

1996

A quote Jerry gave me from Grace Bumbry who was the first Baba in this production,

" I ain't singin with no goddamn monkeys"

[MrCafiero]

ROFLMAO!!!!!!  I concur!LOL!!

[hillevifan]

Can you please post Anne's aria and Caballeta "No word from Tom...I go to him!"