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 time it is wholly a work of the twentieth-century, and indeed it is centrally concerned with the impossibility of return, artistic, psychological or actual, as well as with the nature and limitation of human free will. The Rake's Progress is not one of unbridled dissipation but rather, more interestingly, one of attachment to naive notions of freedom and choice, and his tragedy is that he can never go back.

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Filling virtually every corner of his Brook Green apartment, John Russell Taylor's legendary library reflects the incredible breadth of interest that shaped his mind during his almost 30 years as art critic for the Times. Ranging from the fine and decorative arts to drama, cinema, music, poetry, literary studies, biography, bibliography, and London topography, his collection also contains several dozen of his own works, including the only authorised biography of Alfred Hitchcock. The first 5000 of his books on the visual arts - including rare, signed, and limited editions are now for sale. To keep updated on new releases, follow us on Instagram @theprivate.library (https://www.instagram.com/theprivate.library/)

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