In the Wings

Take a tour through BLO's "Top Ten" opera memories from 2017...

The inspired suggestion of Auden as librettist came from Stravinsky’s neighbor, Aldous Huxley. Auden had been an opera lover for years, a passion he shared with his devoted-yet-fickle lover Chester Kallman, whom Auden brought on as co-librettist.

Neoclassicism in music was an important and striking 20th-century trend…and Stravinsky has often been portrayed as its most eloquent proponent and The Rake’s Progress as its culmination.

Boston Globe: Did the Star-Spangled Banner land Stravinsky in jail? An irresistible headline, a famous photograph…but it may all be just a kind of urban legend, “fake news” before its time. The real story is rather more complex and interesting.

Stravinsky: A face of infinite variety and music of an almost unprecedented range of stylistic mastery.

Jane Eaglen made her American debut with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra in the Hatch Memorial Shell on July 3 and 4, 1992. The soprano had been singing professionally in her native Britain for eight years and stood on the cusp of what turned out to be a major international career.

Boston Lyric Opera has established itself as a lead player in the space where the opera world and digital worlds collide. BLO’s latest initiative is a Virtual Reality (VR) video that immerses viewers in a rehearsal for its upcoming production of The Rake’s Progress.

David Cushing: The man to talk to about in the second half of Boston Lyric Opera's 2016/17 Season. The New Hampshire-born bass-baritone is the only soloist who will appear in both of the remaining productions, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

What's is The Rake's Progress about? Everything you need to know: Super Short Synopsis. The Inspiration. An Opera... About Opera? The Boston Lyric Opera Production. Fun Facts

In 1947, Stravinsky visited the Art Institute of Chicago and viewed a series of engravings by the 18th-century artist William Hogarth, entitled A Rake’s Progress. These eight scenes, which traced the descent of Tom Rakewell from respectability to debauchery to madness, struck him immediately with their dramatic potential—and thus, the seed was planted for what became his neo-classical operatic triumph, The Rake’s Progress.