Rite of Autumn

Igor Stravinsky's new opera. The Rake's Progress, headed into the Metropolitan Opera for its U.S. premiere last week and there, before a large audience of well-wishers (and an estimated 9,000,000 who listened on radio), fell flat on it's libretto. Continental capitals, more used to new operas than the U.S., had taken The Rake pretty much in stride since its Venetian premiere (TIME, Sept.24, 1951). But as the first modern work the Met had produced in five years, it seemed pretty effete. Written by Poet W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman as an 18th century moral fable, The Rake's book pointed its moral more in irony than in earnestness, had a minimum of dramatic action onstage, and for its biggest bit of comedy wagged its lean finger at a bearded lady. What the audience saw was an expensive series of tableaus (patterned somewhat after Hogarth's famed engravings) peopled by a number of over-symbolic and under-blooded characters, none of whom evoked much sympathy.

What the Met audience heard was Stravinsky gone autumnal. The music began with a brass fanfare in antique vein, worked its often dissonant way through a series of style movements reminiscent of Handel, Mozart and, occasionally, subdued Verdi. It had uncharacteristic lyrical moments, e.g., Tenor Eugene Conley's lament in the brothel scene and Hilde Gueden's pretty love song in the garden, and jabs of vulgar humor in Blanche Thebom's bearded-lady scenes. But it never found anything to get excited about, and rarely attempted to follow an idea very far.

Stravinsky's orchestration was the best thing in the production: it probably established a record for different ways of sounding a common chord, and it was as full of his halting, polka-like rhythms as Traviata is of waltzes. But after 3 1/2 hours the audience had had more than enough: most of it had left before the last bows were taken.

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