This Friday sees the return of John Cox’s production of Stravinksy’s The Rake’s Progress at Glyndebourne. The production, now in its forty-eighth year, will feature AH singer Louise Alder who makes her role debut as Anne Trulove and will run until 27 August.

Speaking on the production John remarked “Forty-eight years is quite an exceptional life span for an opera production and the fact remains that when this production was first done in 1975 we could have had no idea of its worldwide destiny. Glyndebourne’s own production has been presented seven times in the Festival (1975, ’77, ’78, ’89, ’94, 2000 and 2010) and five on the Glyndebourne Tour (1975, ’78, ’80, ’92 and 2021), as well as in Angers, Bremen, Paris and Nancy. Since the early 1990s it has been hired by many opera companies and seen in Salzburg, Madrid, Turin, Stockholm and Sydney to name just a few. It was also re-created in larger format for La Scala in Milan and presented at Genoa before being purchased by San Francisco Opera who in turn rented it to New York, Dallas, Toronto, Honolulu and Vancouver. It has also been filmed twice.”

For his Rakes Progress, John worked closely with designer David Hockney whose designs he described as “Like Stravinsky’s music … traditional and unmistakably modern at the same time.”

WATCH: Director John Cox and designer David Hockney talk about the inspirations behind their classic production of The Rake's Progress:

https://youtu.be/9T39hWYuVhA