The Rake's Progress is Stravinsky's biggest work and one of the few great operas written since the 1920s, rare too for the unusual quality of its libretto, by Auden and Kallman. Its importance is undisputed, but so too are the problems it raises: problems of both performance and understanding, caused by the irony with which it is so thoroughly permeated. In aspects of style and operatic convention it looks back to the eighteenth century, and in particular to the operas of Mozart and da Ponte, while making references also to other periods, to operas from Monteverdi to Verdi. Yet at the same...
The Rake's Progress is Stravinsky's biggest work and one of the few great operas written since the 1920s, rare too for the unusual quality of its libr...
Events such as the fire of London and the Plague, and locations like the Globe, are part of our 'national heritage' however until recently the history of London between 1500 and 1750 has been little studied. As a city London underwent exceptional changes - its population soared from around 50,000 in 1500 to approximately 200,000 in 1600 and by 1700 it was nearly half a million. Covering the themes of polis and the police, gender and sexuality, space and place, and material culture and consumption the book encounters thieves, prostitutes, litigious wives, the poor, disease, 'great quantities...
Events such as the fire of London and the Plague, and locations like the Globe, are part of our 'national heritage' however until recently the history...
