Michael Anderson and microphilharmonic welcome director Kirk Boyd and company for a presentation of Igor Stravinsky and Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz’s unique and always intriguing 1918 L’Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale), an hour-long theatrical work to be “read, played and danced” by three actors, a dancer, and a septet of musicians. The Shedd’s production uses the English translation of Ramuz’ original French libretto by Michael Flanders and Kitty Black commissioned in 1954 by the Edinburgh Festival.
Drawing on a Russian folk tale, "The Deserter and the Devil", collected in the mid-19th century by Russian ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev which tells the age-old tale of a man who sells his soul to the Devil, Ramuz and Stravinsky created with L’Histoire du soldat a morality play for the ages: a soldier who, stopping to rest on his way back home, takes out his violin to sooth his spirit but is tempted by a passerby to trade the instrument for a magic book that would make him rich…which, of course, doesn’t work out so well.
| |
| Event Personnel |
| |
| |
| |
| Creative Team |
| |
|
| |
| Cast |
| |
|
| |
| Orchestra |
| |
|
| |
| Production Team |
| |
|