The Rake's Progress

The highlight of my Stravinsky week was hearing Stravinsky's opera "The Rake's Progress" performed at the Met, with James Levine conducting.  It was a revelation; I had last heard this opera performed at New York City Opera in the 1980's in what was probably not a very good performance; mostly I remember the David Hockney sets.
I love how Stravinsky sets the English text;  maybe because he was not a native English speaker, he was extremely fastidious in his settings.   The opera is a musical delight from beginning to end.   And what begins as an old fashioned number opera with a fair amount of humor eventually catches you unaware; the penultimate scene, with Tom in the insane asylum, is one of the most moving I have ever encountered in an opera.   Though Stravinsky and Auden undermine it somewhat by adding an epilogue when the characters all remind you that what you heard was a story...
Levine's conducting of the Met Orchestra was superb (as always), with wonderful clarity detailing Stravinsky's orchestrations and plenty of energy when needed.   I don't really understand why this opera is not more of a staple of the repertory;  the Met itself did it in the early 1950's (directed by George Balanchine!), and then not again until 1997, 2003, and the present performances (only 3) in 2015.  And no HD broadcasts.   But who am I to fathom the tastes of opera programmers and their audience?