Diana Damrau
Photo: Tanja Niemann
Over sixty years after the premiere of Stravinsky’s ‘The Rake’s Progress’, the young English composer Iain Bell (*1980) takes William Hogarth’s other famous series of engravings ‘A Harlot’s Progress’ as the inspiration for his commissioned work for the ‘Theater an der Wien’. The opera will be premiered on Sunday, October 13th. The libretto is the work of the author Peter Ackroyd, best known to international readers for his historical novels and accounts of English history. The opera evokes Hogarth’s London, the bustle and noise of the streets and markets, but also the dark corners, the prison, prostitutes’ cheap lodgings, disease and death. Diana Damrau sings the leading part Moll Hackabout, Jens-Daniel Herzog stages this world premiere at the ‘Theater an der Wien’. Finnish conductor Mikko Franck is the Musical Director, he leads the ‘Wiener Symphoniker’ and the Arnold Schönberg Choir.
