FIRST NIGHT

Opera review: The Rake’s Progress at the Peacock, WC2

The tenor Frederick Jones was terrifically good, singing with warmth, openness and incisive diction
Frederick Jones sang with warmth and incisive diction as Tom Rakewell
Frederick Jones sang with warmth and incisive diction as Tom Rakewell

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★★★★☆
Saddled with a dry theatre that squashes orchestras and smothers vowels, British Youth Opera is brave to take on the rapier-sharp textures of Stravinsky’s score and the quickfire wit of Chester Kallman and WH Auden’s libretto. Brave, but also confident in their young singers, among whom the rake himself, Frederick Jones’s Tom Rakewell, is terrifically good.

Jones, a British-born New Zealand tenor, knows how to connect with an audience — even in the West End’s greyest box — and, from his egotistical cri de coeur Here I Stand onwards, Jones sang with warmth, openness and incisive diction. The Rake’s Progress can be a rather chilly drama, but in the final Bedlam scene there was something really wretched about Tom’s downfall into total decrepitude.

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