DIRECTOR David McVicar's confessed long-held ambition to stage Stravinsky's Rake, one of the youngest works in his now extensive CV, is evident in every beautifully-conceived moment of this triumphant production.
Just as importantly however, Scottish Opera has provided him with a cast, conductor, and creative team that is absolutely top-notch.
Utterly faithful to the 18th century setting in its glorious costuming and elements of John Macfarlane's brilliantly clever designs, it is as startlingly modern as it is timeless. Tom Rakewell (Edgaras Montvidas) and Nick Shadow (Steven Page) are Faust and Mephistopheles, but there are echoes of Anna Nicole (most obviously in Karen Murray's bare-breasted Scots madam Mother Goose), Withnail and I, celebrity culture and Madonna videos sprinkled across the story.
Both men give swaggering performances, with Montvidas in particular on glorious vocal form and alive to every detail of Andrew George's choreography, which animates the excellent chorus every time they appear. But they are matched by the women, Leah-Marian Jones revelling in the bearded lady, Baba the Turk, and Carolyn Sampson all but stopping the show with her garden aria at the end of Act 1.
The episodic structure of the piece, reflecting its Hogarthian inspiration, is embraced by the production, and its old-fashioned theatricality of frames and painted flats and frontcloths, but it is married to a knowingness of frames, and gaps at the wings where characters can be seen making their exit, that is also in tune with witty libretto. Conductor Sian Edwards' approach to the score is a perfect match, and the Orchestra of Scottish Opera has rarely sounded better, with principals trumpeter Tom Poulson and cellist Rudi de Groote among those on star form.
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