The garden at Trulove’s country house, an afternoon in spring. Tom and Anne are flirting. The girl’s father, Trulove, has doubts about the young man’s morals. For this reason he offers him a job as an accountant, but Tom refuses. He is not interested in work, and expresses his first wish: to get rich. Whereupon an unknown person, Nick Shadow, appears and announces that an uncle of Tom’s, who has just passed away, has left his nephew a legacy. Tom takes Shadow into his service and decides to settle in London before marrying Anne. The betrothed part fondly, while Shadow declares that for his fee he will wait for a year and a day.
At Mother Goose’s brothel, in London, among whores and patrons, Mother Goose and Shadow inculcate in Tom the principles of a cynical and dissolute existence. When the conversation turns to love, however, the young man is suddenly seized by a nostalgia for Anne. He would like to leave at once, but Shadow halts time and puts it back by one hour, while inciting Tom to enjoy himself. The young man begs Love to receive his sadness. The whores, who are perturbed and fascinated, would like to console him. But Mother Goose asserts her rights and goes off with the young man. Shadow comments that when the rake’s dreams end he shall die.
Anne is convinced that, although she has had no further news of Tom, the young man still loves her and needs her help. For this reason she has decided to go to London to look for him. She invokes the aid of night and the moon as allies.
Tom is bored, disappointed with the hedonistic life he has been leading, and expresses a second wish: to be happy. Shadow then convinces him to marry Baba the Turk, a monstrous circus woman with a black beard. Only thus, with a gratuitous gesture that will free him at one stroke from the restraints of passion and reason, can Tom be happy. Laughter by the two men seals their
understanding.
Anne is waiting for Tom, when she is surprised by a procession of servants.
Tom steps out of a sedan chair, sees the girl and attempts to convince her to come home. Meanwhile Baba the Turk, seated in the sedan chair with her face veiled, demands her husband’s attentions. Tom confesses to the astonished Anne that the woman is his wife, and calms Baba by telling her that the other woman is merely a milkmaid to whom he owes money. The crowd of passers-by have in the meantime recognised Baba and acclaim her. To please her public, Baba removes her veil to reveal a thick dark beard.
Tom can no longer bear the presence of Baba and her constant chatter, but she reacts furiously to her husband’s irritation and contempt. Tom, who has silenced his wife by covering her head with his wig, dozes off. Meanwhile Shadow enters with a weird machine that turns stones into bread. When he wakes up, Tom expresses a third wish: to do good works with a machine that he has just dreamed about, and thus be worthy of Anne’s love. When he recognises the machine as Shadow’s, Tom exults. He wishes to construct others on an industrial scale, in order to rid the world of hunger and poverty.
Tom’s enterprise fails and his assets are put up for auction. Anne is among the public. And one of the items to be auctioned is Baba in person. As soon as the wig over her head is removed, she resumes the chatter interrupted in the previous scene. From the street are heard the derisive voices of Tom and Shadow. Before exiting with dignity and the reluctant help of Sellem, the auctioneer, Baba reassures Anne of Tom’s love for her.
In a graveyard with tombstones, on a starless night, a year and a day have passed since Tom’s pact with Shadow and the latter now demands his fee: not money, but the rake’s soul. In his conceit however, the devil offers him an extreme means of escape: he can still wager his life – and the salvation of his soul – in a game of cards. Tom must guess the three cards which Shadow will draw from the pack. Thanks also to his love of Anne, he guesses them correctly: the first is the queen of hearts; the second the two of spades; and the third, the same queen of hearts which Shadow, cheating, had slipped back into the pack and drawn again. Defeated, the devil sinks into fire and ice, but drags Tom’s reason with him. As a result Tom now believes himself to be Adonis.
Believing himself to be Adonis, Tom summons the other inmates to celebrate his marriage with Venus; and in effect, when Anne appears, he mistakes her for the goddess of love. He begs her forgiveness. Anne for her part cradles Tom to sleep with a lullaby before Trulove enters and takes her away. On reawakening, Tom searches in vain for his Venus and dies of a broken heart.
In front of the curtain the lights go up. The principal characters in the opera take their bows to assert its moral: the devil finds work for idle hands to do.
