Auden first met Stravinsky to discuss the libretto of The Rake’s Progress in Hollywood in 1947, and Robert Lepage winds forward his “clock of fashion” to the time and place of the opera’s composition. Hogarth’s Gin Alley runs into Easy Street, populated by Vegas hookers, dancers and chancers. The composer-sanctioned division into two halves rather than three acts is a complementary move from the conventions of the opera house to the theater, and what a show we have. Madam, or rather Mother Goose (Julianne Young, bearing a disconcerting resemblance to Julianne Moore), lures the naive Tom onto a heart-shaped satin bed, and the pair literally sink into its folds – before our hero re-emerges, worldly wise and weary, in front of a blow-up Winnebago, and banishes ennui not with mother’s ruin but a line or two of Colombia’s finest.

Andrew Kennedy takes all this in his stride, and his always fresh, appealing tenor ensures we retain our sympathy through Tom’s piteous downfall from indolence to insanity, far more so than we are likely to for his operatic model, Ferrando. From Nick Shadow’s first entrance under the shade of a Dallas derrick to his flame-capped Broadway nemesis, I was reminded not of Dons Alfonso or Giovanni but rather Alberich. This was largely thanks to William Shimell’s iron-black baritone and rasping wit, though lines such as “That man alone is free who chooses what to will and wills his choice as destiny” certainly strike a Wagnerian ring of mania.

The recorded balance is slightly unfavourable to Laura Claycomb in “I go to him”: this is her “Abscheulicher” (complete with climactic, expertly disciplined horn obbligato), but she is no Leonora, and is happiest vocally when she is dramatically downcast. The two crucial scenes, either side of the interval, between her, Tom and Dagmar Pecková’s show-stealing Baba are models of ensemble writing and direction, pulling between operatic naturalism and Stravinsky’s preferred realism just as Tom is torn between one woman and the other – and all in front of a chorus who change from waltz-time party guests to painfully well observed inhabitants of Bedlam with phenomenal assurance.

Doubtless Kazushi Ono must take credit for some slickly cinematic pacing, but in truth I hardly noticed him or the prompt orchestral contribution. This is a show to be seen – Covent Garden is staging it in July – and, down to the witty, period and silent menu screens, a model of its kind.