Robert Lepage transplants Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress, a timely tale of the perils of success, to 1950s America, with Tom Rakewell a Hollywood star who has, and then loses, everything.

West Coast America of the 1950s and the early days of television give Rakewell his route to fame and fortune, and also to the dramatic decline into madness that follows. With visual references to Hollywood classics and a score that combines the 18th and 20th centuries in a fascinating mix, The Rake’s Progress is a morality tale of the past with definite messages for the present.

The tempting diabolic Nick Shadow, the outrageous bearded woman Baba the Turk, the ‘girl back home’ Anne Trulove: The Rake’s Progress is an opera packed with great characters and surprising events played out to the full in this colourful and imaginative production. The sheer pizzazz of the sets matches the style of one of 20th-century opera’s most elegant scores.

This is the first revival of the Royal Opera’s Lepage-directed The Rake’s Progress, which is performed in English with surtitles.

Learn more about London operas within the West End.