In the 1951 opera The Rake’s Progress, which composer wrote the aria “I Go, I Go”?

Igor Stravinsky wrote the 1951 opera The Rake’s Progress, which includes the aria “I Go, I Go.”

The opera was composed by Stravinsky to an English libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman. Its story follows Tom Rakewell, whose reckless choices lead him away from ordinary life and toward ruin. The work was inspired by the eighteenth-century engravings and paintings of William Hogarth, rather than by the Greek myth of Pandora.

The phrase “I Go, I Go” appears in the opera’s first act and is associated with the work’s stylized, neoclassical musical language. Stravinsky composed the opera in a period when he was consciously engaging with earlier operatic traditions, including forms associated with Mozart.

The title can be confused with Pandora-related works because “rake” and “box” imagery both appear in later cultural discussions of moral downfall. However, The Rake’s Progress is a distinct work, with Tom Rakewell—not Pandora—as its central character.