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Stravinsky, The Rake’s Progress:Soloists, Orchestra and Chorus of Buenos Aires Lírica. Conductor: Alejo Pérez, Teatro Avenida, Buenos Aires. 8.5.2009. (JSJ)

Director: Marcelo Lombardero
Sets: Daniel Feijóo
Costumes: Luciana Gutman
Lighting: Horacio Efron
Chorus: Juan Casasbellas

Cast:
Trulove: Christian Peregrino
Anne: Ana Laura Menéndez
Tom Rakewell: Jeffrey Lentz
Nick Shadow: Gustavo Gibert
Mother Goose: Marta Cullerés
Baba the Turk: Evelyn Ramírez
Sellem: Santiago Bürgi
Guardian: Walter Schwarz

Ana Laura Menéndez (Anne) and Jeffrey Lentz (Tom) with Christian Peregrino (Trulove) looking on. (Photo: Liliana Morsia)

After having started its season with the ever popular, and for some over-performed, La Traviata, Buenos Aires Lírica turned full circle with its second offering, The Rake’s Progress. Previously produced in Argentina only three times, the last at the Teatro Colón in 2001, this is thus the fourth production – and the third in the original English (the 1959 local premiere having been in Italian) – of this work, the penultimate and best known opera of Stravinsky.

The storyline of The Rake’s Progress is almost timeless, with the varied scenes – from the country to the brothel, Tom’s suite, a London street, and finally the lunatic asylum – offering many creative opportunities. Hogarth, on whose paintings the libretto is based, completed the series of eight works in 1733, but the message is as relevant, moral and all, almost three centuries on. But once an era is settled upon surely it should be adhered to consistently in the various scenes? Whatever this production was – and if I had to I would place it in the 1960s or 1970s from the dress and style – it certainly was not the 2025 of a Hogarth exhibition poster!

The production was given a very English feel, opening on a golf course and ten pound notes and Union Jacks incorporated in the decor, including a Union Jack-painted car in which the newly married Tom and Baba arrived on stage in the middle of Act 2. Although kitschy for an Englishman this worked well in this context. And there was even an aerial bed in the brothel on which Tom and Mother Goose retired together as it was drawn up.

The American tenor Jeffrey Lentz, making his debut in Argentina, took the title role and it is one to which he is well suited, both vocally and physically with his boyish looks, except that in manner he is obviously American and not English. Alongside him Ana Laura Menéndez was a gentle Anne, while Gustavo Gibert – whose first appearance was in a middle row of the auditorium – was an oily and persuasive Nick. Evelyn Ramírez played the bearded Baba with aplomb, gruff at first and later tender with Anne, Christian Peregrino was a concerned father, and Santiago Bürgi was a suitably slick Sellem.

The chorus was also on good form, as was the orchestra under Alejo Pérez.

A comment too about the diction. In general Argentines have difficulty in enunciating English correctly and not only were there some odd pronunciations but except in the slower passages the words were mostly unintelligible, obliging me to follow the (Spanish) surtitling. Some training here would not go amiss.

Jonathan Spencer Jones


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