Concluding the London Stravinsky Festival, Covent Garden put on an impressive revival of the 1979 production of The Rake’s Progress.

Once again we were captivate by this unique work, almost old-fashioned in its Mozartian formality of solos, ensembles and choruses with orchestral accompaniment, “opera” as distinct from “music theatre”, but brought into the twentieth century by the composer’s interlacing of piquancies and subtly individual orchestration. W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman’s libretto is a fable with a conventional moral tacked to it, cool, unsentimental, uncynical, the characters more or less perfunctory, leaving us little room for pity or morality.

Elijah Moshinsky’s staging has an appropriate artificiality in its grotesquerie, movement and grouping. Yet, if  we are distanced, we are gripped throughout, musically enchanted, feasted with first-rate singing, even held by the occasional dramatic or moving moment from Tom’s desperate card-playing with the Devil, or Anne’s lullaby over the demented Tom in Bedlam. Robert Tear repeated his outstanding portrayal of the anti-hero Rake, no weak degenerate but firm and full-blooded, the voice sure and admirably controlled, words consistently clear.

Donald McIntyre was again the Mephistophelean, Nick Shadow, avoiding temptation to melodramatic exaggeration. A new Trulove in John Tomlinson ensured, it goes without saying, faultless enunciation of words and sonorous delivery. Helen Donath returned to sing Anne, gentle in her sorrow, richly eloquent in  her first act aria, tender in her lullaby, always assured, never lapsing to false emotionalism. Sarah Walker made a lively new Baba the Turk, and Matthew Best impressed with his brief appearance as a new Madhouse Keeper. Familiar figures adding musically to the animation were Patricia Payne’s sensual Mother Goose and John Dobson’s flamboyant Sellem.

David Atherton’s conducting maintained a firm grip and enabled the orchestral beauties and harshnesses to make their fullest effect.