Performance

L'Histoire du soldat

1 upcoming performance in New York

Stravinsky and Swiss writer C. F. Ramuz shaped *L’Histoire du soldat* in 1918 as a compact theater piece that fuses spoken narrative, dance, and a lean septet, telling of a soldier who trades away his violin to the Devil and learns what that bargain costs. Its jagged marches and borrowed dance rhythms sit between concert music and the vernacular, which helps explain its long afterlife in New York’s cross-genre scene. Early NYC performances became touchstones for modernist theater music between the wars. At The Stone at The New School, the score reads less like repertory and more like a blueprint for today’s hybrid ensembles.