Hockney’s Rake’s Progress remains one of the supreme achievements
With Glyndebourne’s The Rake’s Progress, the show starts with David Hockney’s front cloth. The colour, the ingenuity, the visual bravura: 46 years after this production’s first appearance in 1975, it’s still capable of halting you in your tracks. So drink it in. No blockbuster art exhibition will ever give you such ideal viewing conditions, or so much time with a single artwork. And no mock-up or faded video will ever be able to restore to Hockney’s sets and costumes the meaning and the impact that they possess when they’re peopled by living performers and accompanied by Stravinsky’s score. Come for the backdrops, stay for the opera. This is one revival
