The Rake's Progress at Glyndebourne Festival 2023

 expected The Rake's Progress by Stravinsky and WH Auden to be in high demand with my opera-going friends but other shows in the Glyndebourne Festival 2023 took their fancy and so we were left to go on our own. Not that we were complaining.

This was our last visit to this year's festival and our first on the blue side, where my seat Blue Upper Circle A7 was a very respectable £128.

As on the previous trip with just two of us we travelled light the main difference being that we took a bottle of bubbly instead of buying it there; we can buy a decent bottle of champagne locally for about the price of two classes there.

As it was a Friday, and not a weekend, we figured that the trains down to the south coast would not be packed and so it would be safe to join the Lewes train at Clapham Junction. We made the right decision and the journey was a real pleasure. Travelling that way makes a proper day out of it rather than an opera sandwiched between two bouts of driving.

On arrival it was business as usual, a short walk around Lewes before heading to The Depot for lunch and then the pre-booked coach to Glyndebourne. 

We had booked the earlier of the two coaches aiming to get there as the gardens opened and that plan worked too. It was already quite busy when we arrived, just on the official opening time, and I walked briskly to the Veg Patch Stretch Tent where I was able to grab one of the few unreserved tables.

The before opera time was the traditional mix of tea, cake and walk.

One of the attractions of this production of The Rake's Progress is the set designs by David Hockney, and I liked the mix of real and drawn objects. Of course the music is the priority but while sets (in my opinion) can never make an opera than can help to ruin one. These sets were like a little sweet offered by a restaurant after a good meal, unexpected, pleasing but a small part of the event.

There was a down-side though and one I do not quite understand. The many scenes had many set changes and these took an unexpectedly long time given each set's simplicity. We sat for several minutes in the semi-dark several times. Not quite enough to spoil the opera but annoying nevertheless. 

The music was gorgeous as we follow the rake's quick rise and slow decent, which included marrying a woman with a beard, hence the graphic at the top. The mood was light and comical throughout and that was definitely helped by the silliness of some of the sets.

I think I had seen this production of The Rake's Progress twice before (my Google Calendar only goes back a decade or so) and it was well worth seeing again. Indeed, I'll gladly go once more if the revival gets re-revived.

Sumptuous Hockney at Tate Britain

I had been to a couple of Hockney exhibitions in recent years and that was more than enough to convince me to go and see another one. This time it was at Tate Britain.

Scheduling these things is always difficult and as the tickets were selling rapidly my choices were limited and becoming even more so. In the end it was easiest to go on a Saturday and add a theatre to the trip. I saw a matinee performance at Arcola Theatre and then headed to Pimlico for my 7:30pm date with Hockney. My Art Fund membership entitled me to a ticket for a very modest £8.85.

Time was a constraint and so my evening meal consisted of a sarnie from a Pret a Manger in Horseferry Road, Westminster, which was fine.

The Hockney exhibition was spread over a lot of rooms created within a rectangular space. Like IKEA, you had to go through all of the rooms one after the other and each room had a sequence to it which some people followed while others chose the easier option of moving to the least crowded spaces and taking the pictures in a random order. The exhibition was very busy but, generally, moving around was easy and the crowd did not get in the way of my enjoyment of the exhibition.

Photography was not allowed (they had a catalogue to sell) which was a mixed blessing; I would have loved to have taken lots of photographs (I managed just one sneaky one to prove that I was there) but then so would have everybody else and the circulation of people would have slowed dramatically and many of the more impressive pictures would have been swamped with people taking selfies.

What impressed me the most this time was the range of styles and materials he used. I was expecting, and saw, many large colourful paintings but these were complimented by sketches in graphite and iPad drawings that you could see being composed. I was reminded, as other exhibitions had shown me, just how good Hockney is technically.

It took me a couple of hours to navigate the exhibition simply because there was so much to see and I wanted to spend time appreciating each item. I am grateful that the fairly recent trend of having late openings for major exhibitions allowed me to see it.

Hockney, Printmaker at Dulwich Picture Gallery

I enjoyed the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2012 so much that I was prepared to go to Dulwich to see another collection of his works.

The Citymapper app suggested several ways of getting there and I chose to go to Vauxhall by train and then to Brixton by tube where I caught a P4 bus to take me right to the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

That route also allowed me a little time to revisit some haunts in Brixton where I worked from 2003 to 2006. I was delighted to discover that my regular cafe from those days, San Marino, had moved to bigger and better premises and even more delighted that they remembered me. I had a panini there because that's what you do.

I got to Dulwich almost spot on 3pm which left me with 2 hours to see the exhibition, and it took most of that time.

The gallery had a very familiar feel to it, much like Tate Britain of the V&A, which is not that surprising as it was designed by Sir John Soane in 1817. It consisted of two long galleries divided in to sections each with a large skylight. The larger gallery had the main exhibition (I did not look at that) and Hockney was in the slightly smaller set of rooms that ran alongside it.

The exhibition was arranged chronologically and I was surprised at how much chronology there was. Hockney had done lots of work with prints when he first started and it was a medium that he returned to throughout his career modifying his technique and style as he did so.

I learned a lot about the arts or printmaking from the exhibition and I surprised myself by how interesting I found that. The knowledge helped me to understand some of the prints better as Hockney often used new ideas and mixed techniques in the same print.

The subject matter was something of a surprise too and many of his earlier works addressed homosexuality, which was still illegal in the UK at that time.

The early prints were usually in series inspired by literary themes so that they felt like book illustrations but without the physical constraint of a book.

It was only towards the end of the exhibition that some of the more familiar (to me) Hockney themes appeared with the subject matter changing from people to places and things and with more colour being used.

The famous swimming pool print above was one of a series shown how the final picture was composed from different layers with different colours.

The final set of prints included two stunning ones of the courtyard in a hotel in Mexico. I preferred the other print but could not find it on-line and I kept to the no photography rule despite very strong temptation.

This looked more like a painting than a print due to its complexity and the number of colours used. Hockney achieved this simply (!) by using a lot of layers.

The pictures that I have chosen are unrepresentative of the exhibition and that is partially due to personal preference but also due to what I could reuse from the internet. The earlier pictures were much simpler, not unlike the cartoons that we are used to in newspapers, but no less interesting.

Hockney Printmaker lacked the visual impact of A Bigger Picture but that would be an unfair comparison to make as this was a very different exhibition. Hockney Printmaker told the tale of his use of this medium intelligently and entertainingly. I could ask for no more than that.

David Hockney at the Royal Academy

The Royal Academy did an excellent job in their pre-publicity for this event and they managed to persuade me to buy a timed ticket before it opened despite me not being a great fan of Hockney or even a regular visitor to traditional galleries.

And so I found myself at the Royal Academy at 3:30 on at Saturday afternoon walking past the long queue and then fighting my way through the shop to get in to the exhibition.

Inside it is the familiar arrangement of rooms except that a few ropes mean that you can only pass through it in one direction. Rather like Ikea except with things you want in it.

I think that it is fair to say that the exhibition starts slowly and the first couple of rooms have some interesting if not spectacular pictures that show us just a little of Hockney's history.

Then we enter a new gallery and everything explodes.

On one wall is a tight arrangements of watercolours and on another similar scenes in oils. They are all different but there are common features like hay bales and prominent roads leading you through the picture.

It is totally unrealistic to attempt to show the impact that they make by showing just one of them so just appreciate this one in its own right. Each picture is gorgeous and together they are sensational.

These are the last of the small pictures that we see. Most of the rest range from large to monumental. Each is consists of a number of canvasses that are mounted separately but together. Rather like a jig-saw puzzle for very small children.

Repetition is a common theme. In one room there are seven large paintings of a group of trees that were all painted from the same spot but on different days. Hockney starts to veer towards the abstract here and while the earlier landscapes used natural colours the later ones have vivid blues, yellows, purples and greens that are not natural but somehow look as though they should be,

And that brings us to the very large picture that has been chosen to promote the event. It's easy to see why you would choose it to do that.

As before, this is one of a series of pictures showing the impact of the woodsmen on the landscape. A tree stump is captured from several angles and in several colours and is joined by the recently cut logs.

This is a magnificent painting that, again, has to be seen in its full size to be appreciated.

But it is not my favourite picture. This one is.

The composition, colours and scale make this a breath-taking picture that both draws you to it to see the detail and pushes you away to see the, er, bigger picture. That detail includes the Spring flowers, fresh leaves, bold trunks and the whisper of more trees behind.

Exiting the exhibition after two stimulating hours it took a fraction of a nano-second to decide to buy the exhibition catalogue (I don't but catalogues) which has this picture wrapped around it.

The catalogue is sumptuous and does far more than just repeat the pictures for you, though it does that too. If you go to the exhibition you should definitely buy the catalogue and if you do not go then you should buy in anyway.

It is impossible to overstate how good the Hockney exhibition is. The pictures are stunning and are made the best of by the way that they are presented. It is easy to overlook curating as a skill and it takes a job as well done as this one to remind you what a different it makes.

Sadly I cannot afford to buy a Hockney, nor do I have the space to hang one, so I'll just have to console myself with the catalogue. That'll do.

The Rake's Progress at Glynebourne

My fifth visit to Glyndebourne this season was for The Rake's Progress and just happened to be on the very last night of the festival.

As usual I went with friends and also as usual for this year the weather was not as kind as I would have hoped and so, preferring discretion to valour, we chose to picnic in the marque.

The first order of the day was to consume some of the large volume of cake we took and to help it down with a bottle of champagne. This excess and decadence is not unusual for our picnics at Glyndebourne!

The weather then broke allowing us to take a long stroll around the gardens which is always worth doing and is very much part of what makes an evening at Glyndebourne so special.

Moving away from the house the lawns become fields with just a subtle ha-ha keeps the sheep away from the sandwiches and behind the trees on the left is a long pond that is a popular destination for the pre-opera walks.

Nearer to the house the garden is formal and planted extravagantly with bulging herbaceous borders and exotic plants more usually found in places like Kew Gardens.

The gardens circle around the house offering further delights like the cherry orchard that leads on to a small raised lawn complete with a Henry Moore entitled Draped Reclining Woman.

The gardens reach right up to the opera house and hide it successfully as you approach via the main route from the car park area. This, of course, also has the advantage that you see straight in to the garden from the opera house. The setting and surroundings of the opera house are other factors that add magic to the occasion.

But the music still comes first.

The Rake's Progress is a moral tale where a lazy young man engaged to a pretty lady inherits a fortune and quickly falls in to the temptation of the lavish and Licentious lifestyle that London offers.

It all falls apart and even the love of a good woman is not enough to save him, or rather his sanity, and he ends up in Bedlam.

The music, as you might expect from Stravinsky, is not the easiest to follow or, I suspect, to sing to. The music was almost staccato like at times and the broken tempo did not suit the Rake too much. His love had an easier job of it and he strong and rich voice shone out throughout.

I've said many times that I'm not a fan of elaborate sets but there are exceptions that prove the rule and Hockney's sets revived from 1975 are an example of this. They were simple in style but strewn with images drawn in that familiar style. And with costumes to match.

This was most effective at the start of the third act when the Rake has become bankrupt and his goods are being auctioned off. Here the set, the costumes and even the actors' faces were monochrome. The drama was increased even more when the chorus all came to the front of the stage and sang to the audience en masse.

And so the curtain fell on another season that while it had its ups and downs it never disappointed and it usually delighted. Next year should be more of the same.