The Rake's Progress: A Student Study Guide

STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

STRAVINSKY

A NEW BOSTON LYRIC OPERA PRODUCTION

Esther Nelson Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director David Angus Music Director John Conklin Artistic Advisor

March 10, 2017

Dear Educator, Boston Lyric Opera is pleased to invite high school and college students to attend Final Dress Rehearsals throughout our 40th Anniversary Season. We look forward to seeing you and your students at the Emerson/Cutler Majestic Theatre for BLO's production of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress.

The experience of seeing and hearing live, professional opera is second to none. And we encourage you to explore the world of the opera in your classroom as well. We are proud to offer this study guide to support your discussions and preparations for The Rake's Progress. We’ve included special insights into this particular production as well as the opera’s history with connections to Social Studies and English Language Arts.

Boston Lyric Opera’s mission is to build curiosity, enthusiasm, and support for opera. This study guide is one way in which we support the incredible work of educators like you, who are inspired by this beautiful art form and introduce it to your students. As we continue to develop additional study guides this season, we want your feedback. Please tell us about how you use this guide and how it can best serve your needs by emailing education@blo.org.

If you’re interested in additional opera education opportunities with Boston Lyric Opera, please visit blo.org/education to discover more about our programs.

We look forward to seeing you at the theatre!

Sincerely,

Rebecca Ann S. Kirk Manager of Education Programs

TABLE OF CONTENTS HISTORY OF OPERA: AN OVERVIEW .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF OPERA......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 THE RAKE’S PROGRESS SYNOPSIS.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 WHAT IS A RAKE AND WHY DO WE CARE ABOUT HIS PROGRESS?........................................................................ 12 THE GLAMOROUS COMPOSER.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13 A POET AND A WANDERER.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 15 THE ARTIST’S PROGRESS.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 16 A FAUSTIAN TALE............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 17 “MODERN” LIFE........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 BLO’S PRODUCTION................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 19 LISTEN UP!.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 20 RESOURCES.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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NOTES TO PREPARE FOR THE OPERA........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 24

THE HISTORY OF OPERA Toccata from L’Orfeo. Claudio Monteverdi Favola in musica. Reprint of the First Edition of the Score, Venice 1609, via Wikimedia Commons

People have been telling stories through music for millennia throughout the world. Opera is an art form with roots in Western Europe dating back hundreds of years. Here is a brief timeline of its lineage.

RENAISSANCE 1573 The Florentine Camerata was founded in Italy, devoted to reviving ancient Greek musical traditions, including sung drama.

1598 Jacopo Peri, a member of the Camerata, composed the world’s first opera – Dafne, reviving the classic myth.

1607 Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) wrote the first opera to become popular, Orfeo, making him the premier opera composer of his day and bridging the gap between Renaissance and Baroque music. His works are still performed today.

BAROQUE

1600-1750

1637 The first public opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, was built in Venice, Italy.

1673 Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) Italian-born composer, brought opera to the French court, creating a unique style, tragédie en musique, that better suited the French language. Blurring the lines between recitative and aria, he created fast-paced dramas to suit the tastes of French aristocrats.

1689 Henry Purcell’s (1659-1695) simple and elegant chamber opera, Dido and Aeneas, premiered at Josias Priest’s boarding school for girls in London.

1712 George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), a German-born composer, moved to London, where he found immense success writing intricate and highly ornamented Italian opera seria (serious opera). Ornamentation refers to stylized, fast-moving notes, usually improvised by the singer to make a musical line more interesting and to showcase their vocal talent.

Dido and Aeneas, 1747, Pompeo Batoni, via Wikimedia Commons

1730-1820

CLASSICAL

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1750s A reform movement, led by composer Christoph Gluck (1714-1787), rejected the flashy ornamented style of the Baroque in favor of simplicity refined to enhance the drama.

1767 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) wrote his first opera at age 11, beginning his 25-year opera career. Mozart mastered, then innovated in several operatic forms. He wrote operas serias, including La Clemenza di Tito, and operas buffas (comedic operas) like Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro).

He then combined the two genres in Don Giovanni, calling it dramma giocoso.

Mozart also innovated on the form of Singspiel (German sung play), featuring spoken dialogue, as in Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

1805 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) although a prolific composer, wrote only one opera, Fidelio. The extremes of musical expression in Beethoven’s music pushed the boundaries in the late Classical period and inspired generations of Romantic composers.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

1790-1910

Giuseppe Verdi

Giacomo Puccini

Richard Wagner

ROMANTIC — THE GOLDEN AGE OF OPERA 1816 Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) composed Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), becoming the most prodigious opera composer in Italy by age 24. He wrote 39 operas in 20 years. This new style created by Rossini and his contemporaries, including Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini, would, a century later, be referred to as bel canto (beautiful singing). Bel canto compositions were inspired by the nuanced vocal capabilities of the human voice and its expressive potential. Composers employed a strategic use of register, the push and pull of tempo (rubato), extremely smooth and connected phrases (legato), and vocal glides (portamento).

1842 Inspired by the risqué popular entertainment of French vaudeville, Hervé created the first operetta, a short comedic musical drama with spoken dialogue. Responding to popular trends, this new form stood in contrast to the increasingly serious and dramatic works at the grand Parisian opera house.

Opéra comique as a genre was often not comic, rather realistic or humanistic.

Grand Opera, on the contrary, was exaggerated and melodramatic.

1853 Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) completed La Traviata, a story of love, loss, and the struggle of average people, in the increasingly popular realistic style of verismo. Verdi enjoyed immense acclaim during his lifetime, while expanding opera to include larger orchestras, extravagant sets and costumes, and more highly trained voices.

A scene from a 19th-century version of the play The Barber of Seville by Pierre Beaumarchais. Its origins in the commedia dell’arte are shown in this picture which portrays Figaro dressed in the costume and mask of Harlequin. 1884, via Wikimedia Commons

1865 Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) Tristan und Isolde was the beginning of musical modernism, pushing the use of traditional harmony to its extreme.

His massively ambitious, lengthy operas, often based in German folklore, sought to synthesize music, theater, poetry, and visuals in what he called a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). The most famous of these was an epic four-opera drama, Der Ring des Nibelungen, which took him 26 years to write and was completed in 1874.

1871 Influenced by French operetta, English librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) began their 25-year partnership, which produced 14 comic operettas including The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. Their works helped inspire the genre of American musical theater.

1874 Johann Strauss II, influenced largely by his father, with whom he shared a name and talent, composed Die Fledermaus, popularizing Viennese musical traditions, namely the waltz, and shaping operetta.

1896 Giacomo Puccini’s (1858-1924) La Bohème captivated audiences with its intensely beautiful music, realism, and raw emotion. Puccini enjoyed huge acclaim during his lifetime for his works.

Mikado theatre poster, Edinburgh, 1885, via Wikimedia Commons

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Hammerstein and Kern

Leonard Bernstein

Scott Joplin

20TH CENTURY 1911 Scott Joplin, “The King of Ragtime,” wrote his only opera, Treemonisha, which was not performed until 1972. The work combined the European late-Romantic operatic style with African American folk songs, spirituals, and dances. The libretto, also by Joplin, was written at a time when literacy among African Americans in the southern United States was rare.

20TH CENTURY

1922 Alban Berg (1885-1935) composed the first completely atonal opera, Wozzeck, dealing with uncomfortable themes of militarism and social exploitation. Wozzeck is in the style of 12-tone music or Serialism. This new compositional style, developed in Vienna by composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), placed equal importance on each of the 12 pitches in a scale, removing the sense of the music being in a particular key.

1927 American musical theater, commonly referred to as Broadway, was taken more seriously after Jerome Kern’s (1885-1945) Show Boat, words by Oscar Hammerstein, tackled issues of racial segregation and the ban on interracial marriage in Mississippi.

1935 American composer George Gershwin (1898-1937), who was influenced by African American music and culture, debuted his opera, Porgy and Bess, in Boston, MA, with an all-African American cast of classically trained singers.

1945 British composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) gained international recognition with his opera Peter Grimes. Britten, along with Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), was one of the first British opera composers to gain fame in nearly 300 years.

1957 Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), known for synthesizing musical genres, brought together the best of American musical theater, opera, and ballet in West Side Story—a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet in a contemporary setting.

Porgy and Bess by the New York Harlem Theatre, 2009

1987 John Adams (b. 1947) composed one of the great minimalist operas, Nixon in China, the story of Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Musical Minimalism strips music down to its essential elements, usually featuring a great deal of repetition with slight variations.

TODAY Still a vibrant and evolving art form, opera attracts contemporary composers such as Dominick Argento (b. 1927), Philip Glass (b. 1937), Mark-Anthony Turnage (b. 1960), Thomas Adès (b. 1971), and many others. These composers continue to be influenced by present and historical musical forms in creating new operas that explore current issues or reimagine ancient tales.

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So Young Park as Queen of the Night Photo: Eric Antoniou.

THE SCIENCE AND ART OF OPERA WHY DO OPERA SINGERS SOUND LIKE THAT? Opera is unique among forms of singing in that singers are trained to be able to sing without amplification, in large theaters, over an entire orchestra, and still be heard and understood! This is what sets the art form of opera apart from similar forms such as musical theater. To become a professional opera singer, it takes years of intense physical training and constant practice—not unlike that of a ballet dancer—to stay in shape. Additionally, while ballet dancers can dance through pain and illness, poor health, especially respiratory issues and even allergies, can be severely debilitating for a professional opera singer. Let’s peek into some of the science of this art form.

HOW THE VOICE WORKS Singing requires different parts of the body to work together: the lungs, the vocal cords, the vocal tract, and the articulators (lips, teeth, and tongue). The lungs create a flow of air over the vocal cords, which vibrate. That vibration is amplified by the vocal tract and broken up into words by consonants produced by the articulators.

Breath: Any good singer will tell you that good breath support is essential to produce quality sound. Breath is like the gas that goes into your car.

Without it, nothing runs. In order to sing long phrases of music with clarity and volume, opera singers access their full lung capacity by keeping the torso elongated and releasing the lower abdomen and diaphragm muscles, which allows air to enter into the lower lobes of the lungs. This is why we associate a certain posture with opera singers. In the past, many operas were staged with singers standing in one place to deliver an entire aria or scene, with minimal activity. Modern productions, however, often demand a much greater range of movement and agility onstage, requiring performers to be physically fit, and disproving the stereotype of the “fat lady sings.”

Vibration: If you run your fingers along your throat you will feel a little lump just underneath your chin. That is your “Adam’s Apple,” and right behind it, housed in the larynx (voice-box), are your vocal cords. When air from the lungs crosses over the vocal cords it creates an area of low pressure (google The Bernoulli Effect), which brings the cords together and makes them vibrate. This vibration produces a buzz. The vocal chords can be lengthened or shortened by muscles in the larynx, or by increasing the speed of air flow. This change in the length and thickness of the vocal cords is what allows singers to create different pitches. Higher pitches require long, thin cords, while low pitches require short, thick ones. Professional singers take great pains to protect the delicate anatomy of their vocal cords with hydration and rest, as the tiniest scarring or inflammation can have noticeable effects on the quality of sound produced.

Resonance: Without the resonating chambers in the head, the buzzing of the vocal cords would sound very unpleasant. The vocal tract, a term encompassing the mouth cavity, and the back of the throat, down to the larynx, shapes the buzzing of the vocal cords like a sculptor shapes clay. Shape your mouth in an ee vowel (as in eat), then sharply inhale a few times. The cool sensation you feel at the top and back of your mouth is your soft palate. The soft palate can raise or lower to change the shape of the vocal tract. Opera singers always strive to sing with a raised soft palate, which allows for the greatest amplification of the sound produced by the vocal cords. Different vowel sounds are produced by raising or lowering the tongue. Say the vowels: ee, eh, ah, oh, oo and notice how each vowel requires a slightly lower tongue placement. This area of vocal training is particularly difficult because none of the anatomy is visible from the outside!

Articulation: The lips, teeth, and tongue are all used to create consonant sounds, which separate words into syllables and make language intelligible. Consonants must be clear and audible for the singer to be understood.

Because opera singers do not sing with amplification, their articulation must be particularly good. The challenge lies in producing crisp, rapid consonants without interrupting the connection of the vowels (through the controlled exhale of breath) within the musical phrase.

Perfecting every element of this complex singing system requires years of training, and is essential for the demands of the art form. An opera singer must be capable of singing for hours at a time, over the top of an orchestra, in large opera houses, while acting and delivering an artistic interpretation of the music. It is complete and total engagement of mental, physical, and emotional control and expression.

Therefore think of opera singers as the Olympic athletes of the stage, sit back, and marvel at what the human body is capable of!

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Contralto

Somewhat equivalent to the lower female alto role in a chorus, mezzosopranos (mezzo translates as “middle”) are known for their full and expressive qualities. While they don’t sing frequencies quite as high as sopranos, their ranges do overlap, and it is a “darker” tone that sets them apart. One of the most famous mezzo-soprano lead roles is Carmen in Bizet’s Carmen.

Occasionally women have an even lower range that overlaps with the highest male voice. This voice type is rare, and they often play male characters, referred to in opera as trouser roles.

Tenor

The highest male voice; tenors often sing the role of the hero.

One of the most famous tenor roles is Roméo in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliet. Occasionally men have cultivated very high voices singing in a range similar to a mezzo-soprano, but using their falsetto. Called the Countertenor, this voice type is often found in Baroque music. Countertenors replaced castrati in the heroic lead roles of Baroque opera after the practice of castration was deemed unethical.

A middle-range male voice, baritones can range from sweet and mild in tone, to darker dramatic and full tones.

A famous baritone role is Rigoletto in Verdi’s Rigoletto.

Baritones who are most comfortable in a slightly lower range are known as Bass-Baritones, a hybrid of the two lowest voice types.

Baritone Bass

Mezzo-Soprano

Opera singers are cast into roles based on their tessitura (the range of notes they can sing comfortably). There are many descriptors that accompany the basic voice types, but here are some of the most common ones:

The lowest male voice, basses often fall into two main categories: basso buffo, which is a comic character who often sings in lower laughing-like tones, and basso profundo, which is as low as the human voice can sing!

Doctor Bartolo is an example of a bass role in The Barber of Seville by Rossini.

Bass

C

The highest female voice; some sopranos are designated as coloratura as they specialize in being able to sing very fast moving notes that are very high in frequency and light in tone, often referred to as “color notes.”

One of the most famous coloratura roles is The Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

Soprano

DIFFERENT VOICE TYPES

D

Baritone

E

F

G

A

Tenor Contralto

B

110 HZ

C

D

E

Mezzo-Soprano

F

G

A

Soprano

B

C

220 HZ

D

E

F

G

A

B

C

440 HZ

D

E

F

G

A

B

C

D

880 HZ

Each of the voice types (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass) also tends to be sub-characterized by whether it is more Lyric or Dramatic in tone. Lyric singers tend toward smooth lines in their music, sensitively expressed interpretation, and flexible agility. Dramatic singers have qualities that are attributed to darker, fuller, richer note qualities expressed powerfully and robustly with strong emotion. While its easiest to understand operatic voice types through these designations and descriptions, one of the most exciting things about listening to a singer perform is that each individual’s voice is essentially unique, thus each singer will interpret a role in an opera in a different way.

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E

F

THE PHYSICS OF OPERA SINGERS What is it about opera singers that allows them to be heard above the orchestra? It’s not that they simply sing louder. The qualities of sound have to do with the relationship between the frequency (pitch) of a sound, represented in a unit of measurement called hertz, and its amplitude, measured in decibels, which the ear perceives as loudness. Only artificially produced sounds, however, create a pure frequency and amplitude (these are the only kind that can break glass). The sound produced by a violin, a drum, a voice, or even smacking your hand on a table, produces a fundamental frequency as well as secondary, tertiary, etc. frequencies known as overtones, or as musicians call them, harmonics.

For instance, the orchestra tunes to a concert “A” pitch before a performance. Concert “A” has a frequency of about 440 hertz, but that is not the only pitch you will hear. Progressively softer pitches above that fundamental pitch are produced in multiples of 440 at 880hz, 1320hz, 1760hz, etc. Each different instrument in the orchestra, because of its shape, construction, and mode in which it produces sound, produces different harmonics. This is what makes a violin, for example, have a different color (or timbre) from a trumpet. Generally, the harmonics of the instruments in the orchestra fade around 2500hz.

Overtones produced by a human voice—whether speaking, yelling, or singing—are referred to as formants.

As the demands of opera stars increased, vocal teachers discovered that by manipulating the empty space within the vocal tract, they could emphasize higher frequencies within the overtone series—frequencies above 2500 hz. This technique allowed singers to perform without hurting their vocal chords, as they are not actually singing at a higher fundamental decibel level than the orchestra. Swedish voice scientist, Johann Sundberg, observed this phenomenon when he recorded the world-famous tenor Jussi Bjoerling in 1970. His research showed multiple peaks in decibel level, with the strongest frequency (overtone) falling between 2500 and 3000 hertz. This frequency, known as the singer’s formant, is the “sweet spot” for singers so that we hear their voices soaring over the orchestra into the opera house night after night.

Listen Up!

Prof. Tecumseh Fitch, evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Vienna, explains the difference between a fundamental frequency and formant frequency in the human voice. For an opera singer, the lower two formants (peaks on a graph) determine the specific vowel sound. The third formant and above add overtones that are specific to each particular singer’s voice, like a fingerprint. When two people sing the same note simultaneously, the high overtones allow your ear to distinguish two voices.

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Boston Opera House

A RESONANT PLACE The final piece of the puzzle in creating the perfect operatic sound is the opera house or theater itself. Designing the perfect acoustic space can be an almost impossible task, one which requires tremendous knowledge of science, engineering, and architecture, as well as an artistic sensibility. The goal of the acoustician is to make sure that everyone in the audience can clearly understand the music being produced onstage, no matter where they are sitting. A perfectly designed opera house or concert hall (for non-amplified sound) functions almost like gigantic musical instrument.

Reverberation is one key aspect in making a singer’s words intelligible or an orchestra’s melodies clear. Imagine the sound your voice would make in the shower or a cave. The echo you hear is reverberation caused by the large, hard, smooth surfaces. Too much reverberation (bouncing sound waves) can make words difficult to understand. Resonant vowel sounds overlap as they bounce off of hard surfaces and cover up quieter consonant sounds. In these environments, sound carries a long way but becomes unclear or, as it is sometimes called, wet–as if the sound were underwater. Acousticians can mitigate these effects by covering smooth surfaces with textured materials like fabric, perforated metal, or diffusers, which absorb and disperse sound. These tools, however, must be used carefully, as too much absorption can make a space dry–meaning the sound onstage will not carry at all and the performers may have trouble even hearing themselves. Imagine singing into a pillow or under a blanket.

The shape of the room itself also contributes to the way the audience perceives the music. Most large performance spaces are shaped like a bell–small where the stage is, and growing larger and more spread out in every dimension as one moves farther away.

This shape helps to create a clear path for the sound to reach every seat. In designing concert halls or opera houses, big decisions must be made about the construction of the building based on acoustical needs. Even with the best planning, the perfect acoustic is not guaranteed, but professionals are constantly learning and adapting new scientific knowledge to enhance the audience’s experience.

Boston Symphony Hall, opened in 1900, with acoustical design by Harvard physicist Wallace Clement Sabine, was the first concert hall to be designed with scientific acoustic principles in mind. Each seat was mathematically designed and placed for maximum acoustical perfection.

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THE RAKE’S PROGRESS SYNOPSIS In the idyllic countryside, Anne Trulove and Tom Rakewell celebrate their love. Anne’s father has found a job for Tom in the city, but Tom longs for an easier path to money. Nick Shadow appears with news that Tom has inherited a fortune from an unknown uncle. They must leave for London and Tom need only pay Shadow for his services after a year and a day. In the wicked city, Shadow introduces Tom to Mother Goose’s brothel. Back in the country, Anne fears the worst and decides that she must rescue Tom. Meanwhile, Tom, in his new London house, is already bored with ordinary pleasures, so Shadow suggests visiting the amazing bearded woman, Baba the Turk. When Anne arrives at Tom’s house, she is horrified to find him married to the hideous Baba. When Tom tires of Baba as well, Shadow appears with one last new idea… a machine that turns stones into bread.

Anne again appears to save Tom, but this time his house is for sale and his property for auction. The bankrupt Tom has disappeared with Shadow. Baba urges Anne to follow him. A year and a day from their first meeting, Shadow brings Tom to a graveyard at night. A terrified Tom discovers he must pay not with money but with his soul. But, as Shadow is about to take hold of him, Tom hears Anne’s voice in the distance and his past love is reawakened. Shadow, defeated, disappears into the ground. Tom survives, but he is now mad and is shut up in Bedlam. Anne comes there to comfort him, but there is little to be done. Her father arrives and persuades her to leave Tom to his fate.

Courtesy of Boosey & Hawkes

CHARACTERS Tom Rakewell, a rake

tenor

Anne Trulove, his fiancée

soprano

Nick Shadow, a mysterious devil-like man

bass

Baba the Turk, a bearded lady

mezzo-soprano

Trulove, Anne's father

bass

Sellem, an auctioneer

tenor

Mother Goose, a prostitute contralto (sung by a soprano in BLO’s production) Keeper of the Madhouse

bass

Igor Stravinsky, the composer actor (unique to BLO's production)

Costume designs for the characters of Anne Trulove and Tom Rakewell, by BLO co-designer Neil Fortin.

Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, ca. 1920s-30s.

George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress.

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Stravinsky, pictured at the Hollywood Bowl in 1966. Los Angeles Times

WHAT IS A RAKE AND WHY DO WE CARE ABOUT HIS PROGRESS? Short for rakehell (similar to "hellraiser"), a rake is a term applied to a man who is engaged in immoral conduct, particularly womanizing. A rake can be found wasting his inherited fortune on gambling, wine, women, fine clothes, and other entertainment in gross excess, and eventually accruing enormous debts. The term was most popular in reference to the “Restoration rake;” a carefree, witty, sexually irresistible aristocrat whose heyday was during the English Restoration period (1660–1688). These men were exemplified by a group of King Charles’ II courtiers, and combined reckless extravagant living with intellectual pursuits and patronage of the arts. The rake became a stock character in comedic plays of that time, and afterward turned into a cautionary character portrayed in moralistic tales, as in Hogarth’s paintings.

The slightly sunnier synonym to rake, dandy (short for jack-adandy), became a popular term at the same time to describe a man who was fastidious about his appearance, fashion, and culture—acquiring the finest of everything. The two terms became related, as a display of wealth and a life of leisure often went hand-in-hand with fine clothing. Dandy is a more familiar term, common even into the 21st century.

Since the noun progress has a few meanings, the word in our title could refer to one definition, or could play off of all of them. It is important to note that while we most often use the second and third definitions in modern language, the first definition was commonly used during the time of Hogarth. Indeed Tom

Rake (rāk) noun: rake; plural noun: rakes Definition: a fashionable or wealthy man of dissolute or promiscuous habits.

Synonyms: playboy, libertine, profligate, debauchee, dandy Progress ( prä-grəs, - gres (US) or prō- gres (British)) noun Definition 1: a.) royal journey marked by pomp and pageant or a state procession; b.) a tour or circuit made by an official (e.g. a judge); c.) an expedition, journey, or march through a region 2: a forward or onward movement (as to an objective or to a goal) : advance 3: gradual betterment; especially: the progressive development of humankind Rakewell is on a journey in our story, yet whether it is gradual betterment, or even forward movement toward a goal, all depends on whose perspective you take at what moment in the story. Perhaps the title, The Rake’s Progress, is in itself, a social comment at least, and an oxymoron at most. Men who were attributed the descriptor—rake—in history and literature led both glamourous and controversial lives.

REFLECT: Who would we call a “rake” in today’s world? Why?

Actors Cary Grant and Humphry Bogart could easily be referred to as dandies, perhaps even rakes?

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THE GLAMOROUS COMPOSER Igor Stravinsky was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century and he was well aware of that fact throughout his lifetime.

Perhaps one of the last celebrity classical composers, he lived a life in the public eye and rubbed elbows with the social elite and famous contemporaries including Coco Chanel, Walt Disney, George Balanchine, Pablo Picasso, and many others. Stravinsky lived in Russia, Western Europe, and the United States with a life that spanned nearly nine decades through a period of enormous social change from the late 19th century through three-quarters of the 20th century. It is no wonder his musical genius is woven tightly into the cultural fabric of the last century.

By then, Stravinsky had married (his cousin, named Katherine!) and was spending summers in Russia and winters in Switzerland. On the eve of World War I, sensing calamity, Stravinsky collected his remaining belongings from Russia and moved permanently to Switzerland with his family. He struggled financially during the war as he was unable to receive royalties from his compositions in Russia.

When Stravinsky moved to the U.S., he first came to Boston, settled in Back Bay, and served as a distinguished Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard University for the 1939-40 school year. After he moved to California, Stravinsky would frequently return to guest conduct his compositions at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In a notable local scandal in 1944, Stravinsky was cited by the Boston police at the BSO performance of his harmonically dissonant arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner, saying that he would be charged with $100 fine (almost $1,500 today!) for altering the “official version.” It was later determined that no official version existed.

Sketch of Stravinsky by Walt Disney

Stravinsky was born and raised in Russia, with strong Ukrainian and Lithuanian roots. He studied piano as a child but despite showing great aptitude for music, was encouraged to study law at university. When he was 20, he spent the summer studying privately with composer Rimsky-Korsakov, after which he neglected his law studies, never finishing his degree. By the time he was 25, Stravinsky’s symphonies were being premiered by local orchestras and Sergei Diaghilev took notice. Diaghilev, founder of Les Ballets Russes, began commissioning Stravinsky to compose ballets including The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, each of which premiered in Paris. The Rite of Spring received a highly contentious reception with some audiences calling it genius and others equally scandalized. Rumors were that the premiere incited a riot; however scholars note that it was clear that the reception was divided with as many people applauding and cheering as those booing and jeering.

At Disney Studios in 1941, Stravinsky consults on the animation of his ballet, The Rite of Spring. Left to right: George Balanchine, Igor Stravinsky, T. Hee, and Walt Disney.

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Following World War I, Stravinsky moved his family again, this time to Paris, always a center of arts and cultural life. There were no shortage of wealthy benefactors, fellow artists, and cultural connoisseurs there for Stravinsky to meet. He was friends with Coco Chanel and ran in many artistic circles, discussing ideas and collaborating with Russian choreographer George Balanchine, Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, and French poet Jean Cocteau. This transition also marks an evolution in Stravinsky’s style, blending his Russian heritage and study with the great European traditions to create a neoclassical sound.

Igor Stravinsky In Paris, he also met a Russian dancer, Vera de Bosset, who at the time was married to a scenic designer. Stravinsky and Ms. de Bosset began an affair, so that Stravinsky led a double life until the death of his wife from tuberculosis in 1939.

By the time his wife died, he had begun to cultivate relationships with key contacts in the United States, and with another war looming, he (along with many other European artists) moved to America where he took a temporary position as a guest lecturer at Harvard University. A year later, Vera de Bosset followed him and they were married in Bedford, MA. He finally settled in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, appealing to him for its cavalier and creative entrepreneurial atmosphere with a mystique of the “wild west” (even in the 1940s), yet full of the glamour surrounding the ever-popular silver screen. In Hollywood, Stravinsky was involved in the animation of his famous ballet The Rite of Spring, included in Walt Disney’s Fantasia. By then, in his 50s, starting over again in a completely new place wasn’t easy; yet he surrounded himself with other European expatriates, including George Balanchine, with a particular fondness for the British writers Dylan Thomas, Aldous Huxley, and Christopher Isherwood.

In 1947, Stravinsky visited the Art Institute of Chicago and saw a special exhibition of a series of engravings by the 18th-century artist William Hogarth, entitled A Rake’s Progress. These eight scenes, which traced the descent of Tom Rakewell from respectability to debauchery to madness, struck him immediately with their dramatic potential—and thus, the seed was planted for what became his neoclassical operatic triumph, The Rake’s Progress. Stravinsky proposed the project to British poet, W.H. Auden, who enlisted his partner and collaborator, American librettist Chester Kallman. The two set to work crafting a new libretto inspired by Hogarth’s art; yet unlike adapting a literary work, many details were left to them to be fleshed out. The Rake’s Progress premiered in Venice in September of 1951. Scholars mark this opera as both the pinnacle of Stravinsky’s neoclassical phase, and the beginning of his transition into a completely different style. Auden and Kallman, accomplished poets and avid opera-lovers, meticulously incorporated neoclassical elements in the libretto as well.

The same year, his colleague (some might say rival) composer Arnold Schoenberg passed away.

After his death, Stravinsky began to experiment with the style that Schoenberg developed decades earlier: what is referred to as Serialism, which uses dodecaphony, a twelve-tone scale.

During his final decades in the U.S. Stravinsky enjoyed his celebrity and traveled frequently for performances of new pieces. For the last few years of his life Stravinsky relocated to New York City where he died in 1971.

DISCUSS: Stravinsky is often called the last celebrity composer. In addition to all of his compositions, he consorted with many famous people, including the Hollywood elite and even had his face on the cover of TIME Magazine in 1948. Do you agree that he is the last celebrity composer?

Why or why not?

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Vera de Bosset, Stravinsky's second wife.

A POET AND A WANDERER W.H. Auden, a well-known British poet, worked as an English professor in England and (later) the United States, holding positions at many prestigious universities including Oxford University, Swarthmore, The New School, Bennington, Smith, and several others. He loved to travel and used his travels as inspiration for his poetry. He was particularly interested in sociopolitical and moralistic themes, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1947 for his work, The Age of Anxiety.

Auden, an openly homosexual man, was in a 12-year relationship with Christopher Isherwood who he originally met in elementary school, and later was reintroduced to at age 22. They supported, edited, and critiqued each other’s work, and collaborated on writing projects together, including a few plays. In 1939, they moved to New York City together to escape the war, but parted ways soon after with Isherwood continuing on to Hollywood and Auden staying in New York.

Auden found a rich artistic community in Brooklyn, living in a house shared with many artists including English composer Benjamin Britten who had also recently immigrated to escape the war. It was not long until Auden fell in love with another writer nearly 15 years his junior, Chester Kallman. Auden regarded his relationship with Kallman as a marriage, however this commitment ended after a couple of years at Kallman’s insistence, though they remained very close friends, continuing to live together and collaborate professionally for the remainder of Alden’s life.

Auden and Isherwood, 1939 Photo: Carl van Vechten

Auden and Kallman loved opera; in fact, they collaborated on several English translations of famous operas by Mozart, Verdi and others. So when writer Aldous Huxley (Stravinsky’s neighbor and also a friend of Isherwood) suggested Auden as librettist for the new opera Stravinsky was composing, Auden accepted and, without consulting the composer, asked Kallman to collaborate on the project. It wasn’t until Auden sent the first draft to Stravinsky explaining Kallman’s input that Stravinsky reluctantly agreed that his contributions were invaluable.

Auden and Kallman in Venice, 1951

The pair collaborated on the libretti for a few more operas, but the most notable has remained their work with Stravinsky on The Rake’s Progress. Unlike many other opera libretti, which are often adapted from other literary works, The Rake’s Progress required the creativity and word-craft of particularly skilled poets to construct a dynamic plot from the series of images Hogarth had created.

Auden and Kallman made some changes to Hogarth’s story—for instance, transforming Tom’s simple, pregnant fiancée in the paintings into Anne Trulove, an innocent, devoted, operatic ingénue. Most notably, the librettists introduced a new character: Nick Shadow, a mysterious and cunning man who leads the willing Tom down a path to his own destruction. In the Hogarth paintings, Tom’s poor choices are all his own; with the addition of Shadow, the opera harkens more closely to the many operatic retellings of the Faust story.

Auden lived his later years split between New York City and some of the sunnier climates of southern Europe. He enjoyed critical acclaim as a highly respected poet. Scholars describe W.H. Auden as having a defining influence on 20th century poetry in both England and the United States.

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THE ARTIST’S PROGRESS William Hogarth lived in London nearly three centuries before Stravinsky and Auden. He came from a poor family, and even spent part of his childhood living in the infamous Fleet Prison due to his father’s debts. From a young age he was a keen observer and was able to remember specific details of the scenes he witnessed in public life, which he would sketch later from memory. Due to his skill, he apprenticed to a goldsmith and engraver, quickly mastering the trade to begin his profession at age 23. Soon, in addition to commissions that paid his bills, he was creating engravings of scenes from plays and operas he’d recently attended. Yet, despite his skill at engraving, it bored him and he began to take up oil painting. Largely self-taught, he began to market himself as a portrait artist, while never relinquishing his engraving career.

As a middle-class London citizen, Hogarth had strong opinions that art should comment on and influence public life for the better through moral direction. Although he became a successful portrait artist, through the technology of printing, he was able to mass produce his engraved images, which were more affordable to middle-class citizens, and thus was able to disseminate his moral works more widely. Combining his keen observational skills with his artistry, his love of the theater, and his moral obligation, Hogarth began creating satirical sequential art to tell a moralistic story through a series of images. Scholars now credit Hogarth as the founder of what would become broadsheets, then comic strips, and later, storyboarding for animated and live action film.

His first series was called A Harlot’s Progress (1731), six images that showed the story of a young woman who arrives to London from the country and falls into a life of prostitution. Hogarth first created what would become the third in the series, which depicts the young woman as a prostitute in her bedroom. Having finished it, he was struck with the idea of showing scenes from her earlier life—and thus, the sequential series was born.

The Beggar's Opera Burlesqued by William Hogarth, 1728

Similar to the satirical comics of today, the series featured well-known London figures—including a local Justice who was campaigning to crack down on prostitution—in the images, with the central character, Moll, being fictional. Hogarth was commenting on who the real victims and perpetrators were, as at the time, women prostitutes were seen as malicious temptresses spreading disease. This view was shifting so that the young women who came from the country to the city were soon seen as victims of those who employed them and forced them into a life of prostitution. The original paintings of A Harlot’s Progress were destroyed in a fire in 1755, but the original engravings have survived.

Hogarth followed the success of his first series by finishing his second in 1733, an eight-scene series of paintings titled, A Rake’s Progress, that followed a similar storyline. He then created engravings of them and published those in print in 1734. The story follows Tom Rakewell, who inherits a sum of money after the death of his father, rejects his pregnant fiancée to go to London, and proceeds through a series of bad choices to debauchery and debt, until he ends up insane and locked in Bedlam Hospital, London’s notorious mental asylum. More than merely a cautionary tale, Hogarth meant Tom Rakewell to be interpreted as both a sympathetic and a repulsive character taken to both extremes simultaneously.

The third panel in A Rake’s Progress series by William Hogarth, depicting a wild night at the Rose Tavern, a famous London brothel in Covent Garden.

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Hogarth went on to create at least four more serial paintings, and in his own time, won both fame and fortune. He became a Freemason, painted portraits of London’s upper crust, and befriended some of the city’s great artists and thinkers.

A FAUSTIAN TALE The opera, with the addition of the character Nick Shadow, can be considered a Faustian tale. The story of Faust is a German legend that dates back to the early 13th or 14th century. In it, a highly ambitious man obsessed with knowledge and fame surrenders his moral integrity to make a deal with the devil and achieves power, success, and money—only to ultimately face his own demise.

There have been many, many stories that have borrowed the framework of this cautionary tale, making it an archetypal legend. Christopher Marlowe, a playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare, was one of the first to make this story popular with the creation of his play, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Since then, there have been many adaptations and appropriations of the Faust story including five operas, eight symphonic works, plays, novels, and many more.

REFLECT: What Faustian stories do you know?

Costume design for the character of Nick Shadow,

by BLO co-designer Neil Fortin 17

Igor Stravinsky’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

“MODERN” LIFE

In studying cultural life, what we commonly refer to as “Modern” (normally referring to present-day) now connotes a distinct time period, which, in comparison to today, is not at all modern. Since then we use synonyms like post-modern or contemporary to mean present-day. However confusing it may be, the huge cultural changes that helped to describe and define the period roughly between the 1860s through the 1970s (basically Stravinsky’s whole lifetime!) earned the “Modern” title.

During this century-long period, the world saw two major wars, increased science and technology innovation by building off of the momentum of the Industrial Revolution, and increased global mobility. In response to these transformational changes, the art and cultural worlds responded with works that represented life was in ways that were less realistic and more impressionistic, emotional, symbolic, and metaphorical.

In the musical world, the Modern time period overlaps with a few distinct musical eras, the most prominent of which is known as the Neoclassical era. Composers of the day mimicked the style of Classical era composers, but with a newer sound. At the same time, visual artists were experimenting with Pointillism, Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. Poets explored symbolic imagery and ethereal content. Writers increasingly portrayed untold stories of the “other” with more authenticity and less exoticism. In the dance world, a few brave souls were breaking away from the western classical ballet and creating a whole new form that was contrary to this restrictive tradition. And fashion was helping to define and transform modern life by being both art and commodity. These experimentations were explored across art forms, as many of the artists of the day worked in similar circles and it was not uncommon for them to collaborate.

Stravinsky is a prime example of this, having gone through several different distinct compositional styles himself including both Neoclassicism and later, serialism. He socialized in cultural circles in Russia, Western Europe, and the United States, dining, corresponding, and collaborating with many other artists including choreographers, painters, dancers, fashion designers, poets, writers, film makers, actors, and other composers.

REFLECT: Is this current time period (your lifetime) similar to the “Modern” era that preceded it with a boom in technological innovation, global mobility, and arts and culture? Why or why not?

Igor Stravinsky found a dear friend in Pablo Picasso. The two were introduced when they both were commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev’s Les Ballets Russes, Picasso to create the designs and Stravinsky, the music.

They found mutual affection and respect for one another’s work and company. Stravinsky sent Picasso little musical sketches, and Picasso responded in kind with drawings. Thus began a friendship that would last the rest of their lives.

Sketch of Stravinsky

by Pablo Picasso, 1920

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Hollywood Sign Photo by Thomas Wolf

BLO’S PRODUCTION The design team for BLO’s production of The Rake’s Progress is heavily influenced by the time period when the opera premiered.

The designers were specifically interested in Stravinsky, Auden, and Kallman’s world, as they interpreted Hogarth’s paintings with a Modern eye. Not unlike Auden and Kallman’s adaptation of Hogarth’s paintings, the first major artistic choice BLO’s team made was to add a character: in this case, the character of Igor Stravinsky himself. He is portrayed in a non-singing role, helping to frame the context of the production in the early 1950s with a bit of a glamourous Hollywood feel.

Maryland Monroe by Andy Warhol, 1957

DISCUSS: After viewing the dress rehearsal, what meaning did you make from how the costumes and set design helped to tell the story of Tom Rakewell?

Cheshire Cat in Walt Disney’s 1951 animated feature, Alice in Wonderland

Inspired by both neoclassical music and the glossy technicolor images of the 1950s, some of the design elements will give a nod to the Modern art movements, including Pop-Art, that occurred in the late 1950s and '60s, and the Surrealist art movements that preceded it. In the late 1940s and 50s, chemical technology innovations led to a mass production of materials and goods made of plastic. This brought both bright shiny colors as well as non-natural materials into American culture. Also, the same year The Rake’s Progress premiered, Walt Disney Studios premiered the animated feature Alice in Wonderland, which featured bright colors (a pink and purple cat!) and which bent what is real and what is surreal so that we’re never quite sure what is in Alice’s head and what is actually happening to her. The Rake’s Progress takes a much darker turn than Alice, of course, and yet the juxtaposition of the characters and music with the design will provoke deeper associations and social commentary as the art forms work together to inform the opera.

Costume design for the character of Tom Rakewell, by co-designer Neil Fortin

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LISTEN UP!

Stravinsky wrote The Rake’s Progress in a neoclassical style. This means he was influenced by composers like Mozart. One of the classical conventions of this kind of opera is a minimally accompanied recitative, or sung “dialogue” of the opera. Listen to this example from Act 1, Scene 1 of Recitative.

Listen Up!

Here our protagonist, Tom Rakewell sings one of his most prominent arias, “Here I stand,” at the moment when he’s determined to strike out on his own and make something of himself. Listen to the orchestra. What classical composer(s) does this orchestration make you think of?

Listen Up!

Compare it to a similar except from Act 1, Scene 1 of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

In Act 1, Scene 3, the character Anne Truelove sings her most famous aria of the opera: “I go, I go to him.” Listen to the orchestration and see if you can pick out the “classical” components and the “modern” components woven together in the neoclassical style.

Listen Up!

Listen Up!

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Listen to Baba The Turk’s aria in Act 2.

Listen Up!

Can you hear influences of classical composers like Mozart?

Listen Up!

Listen to the devil character, Nick Shadow’s aria, “I burn! I burn! I freeze!” In Act 3.

Listen Up!

Does it remind you of Il Commendatore’s aria at the end of Mozart’s Don Giovanni?

Listen Up!

Can you also hear a more modern sound like that of Sondheim.

Listen Up!

Sondheim composed work after Stravinsky, but both were influenced by Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Stravinsky was likely to have heard these famous 19th century operettas growing up, and later Sondheim was influenced by them too.

What is Neoclassicism? Neoclassicism is a term that refers to imitating a classical style of an art form. In music, it specifically refers to music composed in the 20th century which mimicked styles of composers from the Classical period including Mozart and Beethoven.

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Finally, in Act 3 Tom and Anne sing a haunting and plaintive duet, “In a foolish dream.”

Listen Up!

It is quietly foreshadowing what is to come in Stravinsky’s compositions as he switches to a completely different style: Serialism. While this is still in neoclassical form, the dissonant tones are subtly suggestive of his next compositions, including his 1966 setting of the nonsense poem: The Owl and the Pussycat.

Listen Up!

GENERAL QUESTIONS TO GUIDE YOUR LISTENING • What instruments are playing?

• How fast is the music? Are there sudden changes in speed? Is the rhythm steady or unsteady?

• Key/Mode: Is it major or minor? (Does it sound bright, happy, sad, urgent, dangerous?)

• Dynamics/Volume: Is the music loud or soft? Are there sudden changes in volume (either in the voice or orchestra)?

• What is the shape of the melodic line? Does the voice move smoothly or does it make frequent or erratic jumps? Do the vocal lines move noticeably downward or upward?

• Does the type of voice singing (baritone, soprano, tenor, mezzo, etc.) have an effect on you as a listener?

• Do the melodies end as you would expect or do they surprise you?

• How does the music make you feel? What effect do the above factors have on you as a listener?

• What is the orchestra doing in contrast to the voice? How do they interact?

• What kinds of images, settings, or emotions come to mind? Does it remind you of anything you have experienced in your own life?

• Do particularly emphatic notes (low, high, held, etc.) correspond to dramatic moments?

• What type of character fits this music? Romantic? Comic? Serious? Etc.

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RESOURCES Note: There is much scholarship about Stravinsky and many, many publications. Visit your local library, or do a quick Google search to learn more. Here are a few used in support of the Study Guide.

PUBLICATIONS Angel, A. (2011, August 3). Top Five Critiques of Stravinsky. Retrieved February 09, 2017, from http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/104409-top-five-critiques-stravinsky/ Besant, L. (2012, March 26). Stravinsky and Balanchine: An Inspiring Partnership. Retrieved February 09, 2017, from http://www.obt.org/stravinsky-and-balanchine-an-inspiring-partnership/ Carioli, C. (2016, July 01). Did the Star-Spangled Banner land Stravinsky in jail? The Boston Globe. Retrieved February 9, 2017, from https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/06/30/stravinsky/rfnaZtqjCQXZAobdv7kVkI/story.html Coda: The Magazine of Boston Lyric Opera. (2017, February). https://blo.org/coda/ Conklin, J. (2017) The Rake’s Progress: Digging Deeper. Boston Lyric Opera. https://blo.org/the-rakes-progress/ Igor Stravinsky: Biography - Classic Cat. (n.d.). Retrieved February 09, 2017, from http://www.classiccat.net/stravinsky_i/biography.php Lindenberger , H. 2010. Situating Opera: Period, Genre, Reception. Cambridge University Press.

Lindenberger , H. (2016). Stravinsky, Auden and the Mid-Century Modernism of the Rake's Progress. Modernism and Opera. Retrieved February 9, 2017, from http://web.stanford.edu/~hslinden/essays/Stravinsky-Auden%20essay.pdf Nandlal, C. (december 2011). Picasso and Stravinsky: Notes on their Friendship. Colloquy, (22), 81-88. Retrieved February 9, 2017, from http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/wp-content/arts-files/colloquy/colloquy_issue_twenty-two/nandlal.pdf No Official Version Exists of 'The Star Spangled Banner' Daily Boston Globe (1928-1960) - Boston, Mass. Jan 23, 1944 p. C38 Olms, G. (2000, September). William Hogarth (1697-1764). Retrieved February 09, 2017, from http://www.william-hogarth.de/ Schiff, D. (1997, November). Redeeming the Rake. Retrieved February 09, 2017, from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/redeeming-the-rake/376992/ Spiegelman, W. (1978). The Rake's Progress: An Operatic Version of Pastoral. Southwest Review, 63(1), 28-40. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43469024 Stravinsky, I. 1970. Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (A. Knodel, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures Walsh, Stephen. 2006. Stravinsky: The Second Exile: France and America, 1934–1971. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

White, Eric Walter. 1979. Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works, second edition.

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

William Hogarth. (2015, May 07). Retrieved February 09, 2017, from http://www.artble.com/artists/william_hogarth

MEDIA London Symphony Orchestra (1999). The Rake’s Progress [CD]. London: DGH. (1999) Marco Capalbo, M. (Director). (june 24, 2014). Stravinsky in Hollywood [Motion picture on DVD]. United States: C Major Entertainment.

Orchestre de l’Opéra de Lyon. (1996). The Rake's Progress [CD]. Opéra de Lyon: WARNER CLASSICS ERATO. (1995)

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NOTES TO PREPARE FOR THE OPERA You will see a full dress rehearsal–an insider’s look into the final moments of preparation before an opera premieres. The singers will be in full costume and makeup, the opera will be fully staged, and a full orchestra will accompany the singers, who may choose to “mark,” or not sing in full voice, in order to save their voices for the performances. A final dress rehearsal is often a complete run-through, but there is a chance the director or conductor will ask to repeat a scene or section of music. This is the last opportunity the performers have to rehearse with the orchestra before opening night, and they therefore need this valuable time to work. The following will help you better enjoy your experience of a night at the opera: • Arrive on time! Latecomers will be seated only at suitable breaks in the performance and often not until intermission.

• Dress in what you are comfortable in so that you may enjoy the performance. For some, that means dressing up in a suit or gown, for others, jeans and a polo shirt fit the bill. Generally “dressy-casual” is what people wear. Live theater is usually a little more formal than a movie theater. Please do not take off your shoes or put your feet on the seat in front of you.

• Respect your fellow opera lovers by not leaning forward in your seat so as to block the person’s view behind you, and by turning off (not on vibrate) cell phones and other electronic devices that could make noise during the performance. Lit screens are also very distracting to your neighbors, so please keep your phone out of sight until the house lights come up.

• Taking photos or making audio or video recordings is strictly forbidden.

• Do not chew gum, eat, drink, or talk while the rehearsal is in session. If you must visit the restroom during the performance, please exit quickly and quietly.

• At the very beginning of the opera, the concertmaster of the orchestra will ask the oboist to play the note “A.” You will hear all the other musicians in the orchestra tune their instruments to match the oboe’s “A.” • After all the instruments are tuned, the conductor will arrive. Be sure to applaud!

• Feel free to applaud or shout Bravo! at the end of an aria or chorus piece if you liked it. The end of a piece can be identified by a pause in the music. Singers love an appreciative audience!

• It’s OK to laugh when something is funny!

• When translating songs and poetry in particular, much can be lost due to a change in rhythm, inflection and rhyme of words.

For this reason, opera is usually performed in its original language. In order to help audiences enjoy the music and follow every twist and turn of the plot, English supertitles are projected.

• Sit back, relax and let the action on stage pull you in. As an audience member, you are essential to the art form of opera—without you, there is no show!

HAVE FUN AND ENJOY THE OPERA!

Boston Opera House

• Listen for subtleties in the music. The tempo, volume, and complexity of the music and singing depict the feelings or actions of the characters. Also, notice repeated words or phrases; they are usually significant.