The inspiration for this opera was William Hogarth's set of engravings
depicting a young man who squanders an inheritance on gambling and other
vices. Stravinsky saw them in Chicago and invited W.H. Auden to write a
libretto; and he in turn sought the assistance of Chester Kallman. The
resulting text is clear, poised, and well suited to its purpose whilst
avoiding the kind of literary showing off that spoilt Auden's earlier
libretto for Britten's
Paul Bunyan.
However one of the more regrettable features of the present issue is that
for much of the time the text is unclear, and I soon found it necessary to
add the English subtitles in order to be able to follow the words. As such
artists as Felicity Lott, Richard Van Allan and Samuel Ramey have all shown
themselves elsewhere to be more than capable of delivering English texts
clearly, both live and on recordings, I suspect this largely to be the
result of the recording quality, admittedly not helped by Stravinsky's
sometimes unhelpful scoring.
The production, first seen in 1975, rapidly became very well known, mainly
for the remarkable designs by David Hockney. These derive closely in style
from Hogarth and made the viewer in the theatre think they were seeing his
engravings come to life. What was astonishingly effective in the theatre is
by no means as much so on the screen, especially when, in many scenes, the
background appears to be shimmering and therefore uncomfortable to watch.
For most of the time there is a lack of the precision which was an important
characteristic of the stage picture. All of this is presumably another
result of the age of the recording. It is nonetheless well worth seeing as a
record of some exceptionally fine performances in a well considered and well
rehearsed production. It's also valuable to hear Bernard Haitink getting
just the right sound and style from the orchestra . even if the recorded
sound does require some creative listening from the listener at times. There
are no extras and the brief essay in the booklet is about the work and says
nothing about this production. When a performance is being issued whose
historic interest is likely to outweigh any technical deficiencies it makes
good sense to explain to the purchaser as much as possible about that
historic interest. I am not sure whether anyone who did not see the original
production would be convinced from this film of just how good it was. That
said, I hope that enough remains and, together with the merits of the cast
and conducting, this makes it a valuable addition to the available
recordings of this extraordinary work.
John Sheppard
