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A Harlot's Progress Series 22 2.2.1 MASTERARBEIT Titel der Masterarbeit: Iain Bell’s A Harlot’s Progress: A Dramaturgical Analysis of the Journey from Engravings to Opera verfasst von Margarethe Satorius angestrebter akademischer Grad Master of Arts (MA) Wien, 2014 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 066 581 Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt: Theater-, Film- und Mediengeschichte Betreut von: Ass.-Prof. Dr. Isolde Schmid-Reiter Diana Damrau as Moll Hackabout in Iain Bell and Peter Ackroyd’s A Harlot’s Progress: world premiere at Theater an der Wien, October 2013 (Image © Werner Kmetitsch) 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5 1. INTRODUCTION 6 2. HISTORY OF THE PIECE 9 2.1. William Hogarth and British Capitalism of the Early 18th Century 10 2.1.1. Biography of the Artist 10 2.1.2. Development of a New British Capitalism 15 2.2. William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress Series 22 2.2.1. Historical Influences 23 2.2.2. Adaptations of the Harlot Narrative 27 3. IAIN BELL’S A HARLOT’S PROGRESS OPERA 36 3.1. Conception and Realization 36 3.1.1. Theater an der Wien Commission 36 3.1.2. Transmedial Adaptation 38 3.2. Dramaturgy 43 3.2.1. Comedy 46 3.2.2. Tragedy 51 3.3. Music 61 3.3.1. Character 61 3.3.2. Correlation Between Structure, Character, and Setting 68 3.3.3. Dramaturgical Significance of Orchestral Silence 72 4. CRITICAL RECEPTION 76 APPENDICES 89 BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 Primary Sources 169 Secondary Sources 170 2 ABSTRACT 176 ZUSAMMENFASSUNG 177 CURRICULUM VITAE 178 3 Foreword In the autumn of 2013 I was fortunate to join the world premiere production of Iain Bell and Peter Ackroyd’s A Harlot’s Progress at the Theater an der Wien. As a Produktionshospitantin, my responsibilities kept me in close proximity to the composer, artistic team, and performers throughout the roughly six-week rehearsal process. During this period I realized that my unique vantage point presented an unparalleled opportunity to study the realization of a new opera at Vienna’s leading stagione house. I documented my experience, conducted interviews, and researched source material in the hopes of creating an account that would serve two functions: as a record of the piece’s conception and execution, and as a basis from which to draw meaningful dramaturgical analysis. In the interest of the latter of these two objectives, this work provides substantial historical and art historical contextualization for Bell and Ackroyd’s adaptation of the Harlot’s Progress narrative: identification of the sociopolitical and artistic dimensions of William Hogarth’s 1731 series, and scrutiny of the extent to which these manifest in the 2013 opera. Further, I examine the piece’s structure and dramaturgical parameters, predominant compositional gestures, and musical modes of communicating character and setting. The final chapter provides an account of the opera’s critical reception upon its October 2013 premiere. The appendix catalogues exhaustive primary source material—including transcribed interviews, conceptual designs and statements, production and performance stills, and ancillary texts and images—in the ardent hope that this document might prove a useful resource for future productions of Bell and Ackroyd’s opera. 4 Acknowledgements I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with the friendly, professional, and highly skilled team at the Theater an der Wien. I owe particular thanks to the admirable Mag. Anja Meyer, whose diligent and graceful artistic management of the Harlot’s Progress production provided a welcoming atmosphere to the entire team. (Anja, you are a marvel of competence and cookery; thank you for taking me on as your Produktionshospitantin and sous-chef.) To Iain Bell I am especially grateful. Without his generosity of time and unflagging willingness to assist my research, this paper would not have been possible. My procurement and analysis of materials for this work was greatly assisted by the efforts of Raphael Schluesselberg, Sybille Gädeke, Mikko Franck, Dr. Karin Bohnert, Sabine Seisenbacher, and Werner Kmetitsch. For their editorial and logistical support during the writing process, I would also like to thank Dune Johnson, Chanda VanderHart, and James and Daphne Kryshak. Finally, I must also extend my deep appreciation to Ass.-Prof. Dr. Isolde Schmid- Reiter for her patient and insightful advising. 5 1. Introduction In April of 1733 the young British painter and engraver William Hogarth released a revolutionary series of six prints depicting the downfall of a young woman to the ravenous vice of early eighteenth-century London. The cycle, wryly entitled A Harlot’s Progress, achieved unprecedented success, owing largely to the contemporary confluence of two social trends: on the one hand, a rediscovery of Protestant morals and an effort to impose them upon perceived social ills; and on the other, the emergence of an English middle class whose members were largely subject and witness to the increased consumerism that preyed upon society’s most vulnerable individuals. Hogarth could not have chosen a more poetic protagonist as the embodiment of this ideological intersection, as prostitutes represented simultaneously the perpetrators of amoral behavior and the victims of an amoral system: “As the eighteenth century progressed, male heterosexuality was increasingly seen as uncontrollable, and prostitution an unfortunate but necessary consequence of the male sex drive. Prostitutes themselves were more often considered to be helpless victims, rather than the seductive predators of earlier times.”1 This speaks to a characteristic that makes Hogarth both a product of and commentator on his own age, his work documenting the birthing pains of a new middle class in proto-industrial capitalist Britain of the early eighteenth century. However, restricting the contemporary relevance of the Harlot cycle to a literal transposition of its themes in the present day (reading the Harlot’s Progress prints, for instance, as pure criticism of a society which endorses and engages in sex slavery and exploitation of poor women) would do a disservice to the compellingly complex undercurrent of emerging middle class values which shape the content, execution, and appropriation of Hogarth’s work. The widespread reinterpretation of his prints in particular—as everything from staged performances to small collectibles such as tea sets and ladies’ fans2—illustrates the same mentality of consumerism 1 Hurl-Eamon, Jennine. “Policing Male Heterosexuality: The Reformation of Manners Societies’ Campaign Brothels in Westminster, 1690-1720” in: Journal of Social History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Summer 2004), p. 1019. 2 The unprecedented popularity of the Harlot images and characters combined with the ease and speed of their reproduction (both original and plagiarized) resulted in a mass craze for Harlot-themed performances, artwork, and consumer items during the early 1730s. Among these, the women’s handheld Harlot’s Progress fans (see Appendices 7.2 and 7.3) represent perhaps most strikingly the internal contradiction of this “Harlot-o-mania”: under the acceptable guise of reformist social critique, 6 that brings about the downfall of many of his characters. It is this simultaneous representation of and commentary on the burgeoning identity and moral values of a beset middle class that has secured Hogarth’s enduring relevance. Moreover, the nature of its medial production reflects a persistent universality of this story. According to historian David A. Brewer, “The sets of printed images that we call A Harlot’s Progress are thus not merely reproductions of the no longer extant painted Harlot’s Progress (destroyed in a fire in 1755); in a significant sense, they are each A Harlot’s Progress. Despite the existence of autographic originals, Hogarth’s graphic work functions as if it were actually allographic, as if the images themselves were somehow distinct from any of their particular material manifestations. A Harlot’s Progress continues to exist no matter what happens to any given six pieces of paper bearing those images, much less to the putatively original six canvases.”3 Far from being a singular tale of one specific individual, the narrative’s continuous reproduction and resetting testifies to its broader critical applicability and dramatic appeal. It is in this spirit of timeless relevance that British composer Iain Bell began his efforts to bring the Harlot’s Progress to the stage roughly 280 years after its conception. As the demanding title role would be premiered by celebrated German coloratura soprano Diana Damrau, Bell embraced the dual challenge of showcasing her voice, stamina, and dramatic expressiveness through the opera’s aesthetic and musical characteristics while contributing meaningfully to the Harlot’s long historical heritage. The production that premiered at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien in October 2013 under the direction of Jens-Daniel Herzog represents a complex reflection on Hogarth’s unique critical perspective, a renegotiation of traditional operatic and tragic forms, and a fascinating study in transmedial adaptation. Moreover, it presents a rare opportunity to investigate the dramaturgical characteristics of one narrative in both these cheap collectibles both reference and enable a taboo sexual coquetry. In the words of David Brewer, “…such a fan could be used for precisely the same sort of seduction and flirtation as that engaged in by the Harlot herself, with the come-hither gaze she directs out of plate 3 of Hogarth’s original series at the viewer. [... But] while the outlines of Hogarth’s images are reproduced fairly faithfully upon the fan, their order is haphazard and the final plate (the funeral of the Harlot) completely omitted. The visual effect of the fan, even when fully open, is then one of scenes from the life of a harlot, which happen to draw upon images then in circulation, rather than episodes depicting a harlot’s progress from naiveté through ruin to death.” See: Brewer, David A. “Making Hogarth Heritage” in: Representations, No. 72 (Autumn, 2000).
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