L'Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier's Tale)

About the show

L’histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) Music by Igor Stravinsky Edited by John Carewe Presented under license from G. Schirmer, Inc. o/b/o Chester Music Ltd., copyright owners. Written during the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic, Stravinsky designed The Soldier’s Tale to be easily toured and performed by small forces in small venues (large venues, including concert halls were requisitioned as hospitals and for other pandemic needs). The 60-minute work is written for a distinctive assortment of instruments and inspired by popular music of the period, including tango and ragtime. It includes speech, mime and dance. Another aspect of the work’s popularity is the story-line which is based on an old Russian folk tale. A soldier, on leave from the army, trades his old violin for a magic book that can tell the future and make him rich. He soon discovers, however, that he has made a deal with the devil and that money does not bring happiness. Towards the end of World War I, Stravinsky was facing the harsh realities of economic deprivation. Sensing disaster, Stravinsky, ever a pragmatist, formulated with his friends, writer C.F. Ramuz and conductor Ernest Ansermet, a plan to get himself out of his vexing situation. As he explained it: “Ramuz and I got hold of the idea of creating a sort of little traveling theatre, easy to transport from place to place and to show in even small localities.” Thus out of necessity came the chamber-sized neo-classic orchestra. And from Ramuz’s perspective: ‘Not being a man of the theatre, I had proposed to Stravinsky that we write, not a play in the strict sense of the word, but “a story”, persuading him that the theatre might be conceived in much broader terms than usual and that it could adapt itself perfectly, for example to what one might call the narrative style.’ L’Histoire du Soldat is a seminal work of the early 20th Century, one of the final works from Stravinsky’s Russian Period (preceded by The Rite of Spring of 1913). When Stravins