Glory And The Rake

Glory, the 20-year-old daughter of the prominent Sutton Family, would rather devote herself to restoring the family name than look for a potential husband…despite the constant meddling of her aunt. She decides to restore Queen’s Well, the spa that’s been her family’s legacy, but is bothered everywhere she goes by Oberon, the arrogant duke who is visiting her town. But unbeknownst to either of them, the water in Queen’s Well is working its magic on the bickering pair, slowly drawing them into each other’s hearts!

Glory Sutton is determined to revive Queen's Well, the spa that has been owned by her family for hundreds of years. But someone doesn't want the once-popular watering hole to reopen. Could it be the Duke of Westfield? Glory finds the nobleman's sudden interest in her business unnerving, yet she must work with him to solve the myriad mysteries swirling around the age-old waters.

Stravinsky's genius for the stage is here represented by two very different works. Oedipus Rex (1927) is the fruit of a collaboration with Jean Cocteau, in which the Sophocles tragedy is pared down to make an opera-oratorio of overwhelming impact. Judith Weir analyses how this is achieved: the Latin text has an immediacy which is sometimes even comic, and the vibrant rhythms are reminiscent of the Italian operatic tradition - explored by David Nice in his analysis of the score. The libretto of The Rake's Progress (1951) by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman is one of the greatest English opera texts. In a survey of the composition period, Roger Savage examines the contributions of the different collaborators.Contents: The Person of Fate and the Fate of the Person: 'Oedipus Rex', David Nice; 'Oedipus Rex': A Personal View, Judith Weir; On an Oratorio, Jean Cocteau; Oedipus Rex: Libretto by Jean Cocteau, translated into Latin by Jean Danielou; Oedipus Rex: English translation of the narration by e. e. cummings and of the Latin text by Deryck Cooke; Making a Libretto: Three Collaborations over 'The Rake's Progress', Roger Savage; The New and the Classical in 'The Rake's Progress', Brian Trowell; The Rake's Progress: Libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman

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.

Even infamous duelist and poet Vaughn Everard has qualms about dragging an innocent lady into his quest for revenge. But Imogene Devary is the daughter of the man suspected of murdering Vaughn's uncle. Surely that makes her fair game in order to uncover the truth! Can the man who writes such moving verse be beyond redemption? Imogene can't believe so. In taming Vaughn's heart and healing the rift between their families, she's sure she's found her calling. Then his mission to unmask a killer reveals a terrifying plot. Only together can they safeguard his legacy, their newfound love…and England's very future.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.