Stravinsky, Auden, & Kallman

HogarthWilliam Hogarth. The Rake Spends his Inheritance (1735)
Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, Gift of William Gray from the collection of Francis Calley Gray, HUAM264742.

Igor Stravinsky, W>H. Auden, & Chester Kallman

The Rake's Progress, an opera inspired by William Hogarth's satirical engravings, is the result of four years of collaboration between Stravinsky and his librettists, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. It premiered in 1951 during the Venice Biennale.

Auden and Stravinsky were introduced in 1947, after Stravinsky asked his for neighbor Aldous Huxley's help in finding a librettist. After an exchange of letters and telegrams discussing the project, the two wrote the initial scenario during a week at Stravinsky's house in November of 1947. Auden and his partner Chester Kallman completed the first version of the libretto early in 1948; Stravinsky had not expected Auden to work with a co-author, but each poet is responsible for about half of the text (Griffiths 11-15). Stravinsky, meanwhile, had already composed some of the instrumental music and began setting the libretto in early May. Further meetings between the collaborators occurred in October of 1949 and April of 1950, and the librettists made numerous changes to the text as Stravinsky's work on the opera proceeded (27-29).

Although Stravinsky wrote other works for the stage, The Rake's Progress is his only full-length opera. Auden and Kallman completed a one-act libretto for Delia, or A Masque of Night in 1952, but Stravinsky never set the text. However, the three remained acquaintances, and in 1964 Auden wrote the words for Stravinsky's Elegy for J.F.K. (16).