The arias from Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress pose a special problem. Auden and Kallman’s libretto for this opera is witty, sophisticated, and erudite — alas. These qualities may be welcome in a written text, but the language of an opera libretto ought not be too complicated, since it is significantly harder to understand text when it is sung than when spoken or read. Nor can gesture illuminate a discourse on abstract issues such as, for instance, Shadow’s lecture on free will. Even when sung with excellent diction, the text will be imperfectly understood by the audience. The singer ought nonetheless to fight the losing battle of projecting text. The singer’s feeling for the words will communicate itself, even if the words themselves are not always intelligible.
In this opera, Tom can seem passive, a mere tool of Shadow. In fact, though, it is Tom’s conceit, selfishness, and foolishness — so brazenly expressed in his first aria — that conjure Shadow’s appearance. But since the aria (in fact, the entire opera) is couched in eighteenth-century idioms and allusions, the meaning may not be obvious. When Tom describes his body as “not ill-favored,” he is indulging in falsely modest understatement. He believes himself to be handsome indeed. (To be fair, the women in the opera share his opinion.) The line should be delivered with smirking self-satisfaction. A “copybook” is a primer, the one mentioned by Tom evidently containing some goody-goody story about a apprentice working his way up through hard work. In the series of phrases beginning “I play the industrious apprentice,” the repeated high G’s on the word “I” are, I infer, squawks of outrage that such a fine fellow as Tom fancies himself could be expected to work like ordinary folk. Bel canto roundness of tone is not suitable to the expression. The “grave doctors” he alludes to are learned men, in this case, those professing that man cannot affect the outcome of his own fate, since God has determined it in advance. This (Calvinist) doctrine is attractive to Tom, not for its religious basis, but as an excuse to avoid effort. The final lines of the aria paraphrase the once-familiar proverb “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.”
In several places, clarity demands that we avoid linking the final consonant of one word to the initial vowel of the next word. (If the technical terms for this separation, “glottal stop” or “glottal stroke,” sound unduly physical, you may simply call it a “non-elision!”) Otherwise, the audience may hear “sin sit” instead of “since it,” “not ‘til favored” instead of “not ill-favored.” We do this easily and naturally in speech much of the time. Traditional vocal training has always been founded on Italian models, however, and the non-elision doesn’t exist in this language. Therefore, vocal habit tends to cause some singers to neglect it in English and German, where it is necessary. If we speak the words with the intention of making their literal sense clear, we will have a good model for our sung English.
Looking at the score, we may feel that Stravinsky has mis-accented words in several places. But the problem disappears if we consider the bar lines as merely an expediency of notation and a means for the conductor to coordinate the music. We need not necessarily stress a note just because it falls on a “strong” beat. In the climax, for instance, we can still stress the first syllable of “beggar” despite its secondary position in the measure. (Stravinsky creates a syncopation between word accent and musical stress in other languages besides English, by the way.)
Many tenors find the entrance “‘Til I die” tricky. However, help can be found within the accompaniment. In the bars before, the orchestra repeats a three-note motif. Only the final repetition sounds the same pitches that the voice will sing (A, B-flat, C). Once the singer has learned this pattern, he will not need to count numbers; the music itself will count for him.
