Opera review: The Rake’s Progress, Glasgow Theatre Royal

Stravinsky’s neoclassical scores tend to sound as if the reactionary tiger in him has been served with a restraining order.

Their full impact comes from the forcible suppression of emotion within an outer shell of refinement and understatement, underpinned by a fragile, often shrill, irony.

So when it comes to staging a neoclassical opera like The Rake’s Progress, acknowledgment of that is paramount. David McVicar does exactly that in his crafty new production for Scottish Opera, which opened on Saturday, under the musical direction of Sian Edwards.

He pays respect to the 18th century series of Hogarth paintings that inspired Stravinsky, both in terms of the actual visual setting (designer John Macfarlane’s subtly daubed confection of ripe costumes, powdered wigs, Georgian bric-a-brac overshadowed by the ubiquitous skeletal hand of death); and in the sudden freeze-frame poses struck by the chorus, emotive tableaux that provide potent backdrops for the key characters to emerge in high definition – just like a Hogarth painting.

Some, perhaps, a little unconvincingly, such as the outrageous brothel-keeper Mother Goose, sung (by Anne Murray) in a strangely mock, mannered Glaswegian.

But that’s the only cheesy moment. Otherwise this is an even, well-integrated cast, ranging from Carolyn Sampson’s silken white Anne (hitting sublime heights in the gorgeous Lullaby) Edgaras Montvidas’s smoothly transformable Tom, and Steven Page’s sneakily macabre Nick Shadow, to Graeme Broadbent’s reliable Trulove, Leah-Marian Jones’s endearingly grotesque Baba and Colin Judson’s high-octane cameo as the auctioneer Sellum.

Edwards draws all that is lean and tender from the sparingly intense orchestral score, though not all its electrifying moments bear the icy petrifying impact they cry out for. Otherwise, Scottish Opera has a mightily enjoyable winner on its hands.

Rating: ****