 "Stravinsky: A Creative Spring" and "Stravinsky: The Second Exile," Stephen Walsh's hulking, two-volume work (available in paperback from the University of California Press), is among the best musical biographies of the last half-century, patiently disentangling fact and myth. For a compact introduction to the composer, try Joan Peyser's "To Boulez and Beyond" (available in a revised paperback edition from Scarecrow Press), chapters 8-14. The stormy premiere of "The Rite of Spring" is recounted in delicious detail in Thomas Forrest Kelly's "First Nights: Five Musical Premieres" (Yale University Press, 2000).

On "The Rake's Progress," Joseph Kerman's early study "Opera as Drama" (chapter 8) is still worth reading, as is Paul Griffiths' volume in the Cambridge Opera Handbooks series (1982).

ON CD

Despite minimal documentation -- there's nary a text or translation -- Sony's "Works of Igor Stravinsky," a 22-disc box of the Columbia Masterworks recordings conducted or supervised by Stravinsky, is one of the great bargains in the history of music (and occupies only 2¼ inches of shelf space). It contains the composer's 1964 account of "The Rake's Progress" and nearly everything else of consequence. Construct your own festival!

For alternatives to Stravinsky's not always meticulous versions, try the 1951 recording of "The Rite of Spring" by Pierre Monteux (its first interpreter) and the Boston Symphony (RCA); Sandor Végh's breathtaking performance of "Apollon Musagète" with the Camerata Academica of the Salzburg Mozarteum (Capriccio), and John Eliot Gardiner's fleet "The Rake's Progress" (Deutsche Grammophon).

ON THE WEB

 See Stravinsky conduct the last nine minutes of "The Firebird," with London's New Philharmonia Orchestra, at tinyurl.com/5s6vz8.

 Anne Trulove's recitative and aria "No Word From Tom," perhaps the most touching music in "The Rake's Progress," is wonderfully sung (under Sylvain Cambreling's direction) by SPCO artistic partner Dawn Upshaw at tinyurl.com/5mcuy2.

 The Joffrey Ballet's painstaking recreation of Vaslav Nijinsky's 1913 choreography for "The Rite of Spring" (with Nicholas Roerich's original designs and costumes) is at tinyurl.com/5cpnvw.

 And if you've forgotten what Walt Disney & Co. did to "The Rite" in "Fantasia," refresh your memory at tinyurl.com/3bcpry.

LARRY FUCHSBERG