Debuts in Les Noces

Scene from the ballet Les Noces

Stravinsky initially conceived Les Noces as a choral work. The composer’s idea was based on ritual folk songs from Kireyevsky’s anthology. Everything was structured along the lines of an ancient wedding ritual –  with the bride and groom and the lament of the mother and the friends. Stravinsky spent a great deal of time researching folk art. He undertook a trip too Kiev where, in addition to vocal material, he found a description of an old wedding game. At that time, the composer was actively collaborating with Sergei Diaghilev, having been commissioned by the impresario to write the ballet The Fire Bird, which brought the hitherto unknown Russian composer instant fame and recognition. Work on Les Noces was put back on several occasions, and it was only in 1915 that Stravinsky played several highlights from the opus-to-be for Diaghilev.

“He was so moved by it, his delight seemed so utterly sincere and touching that the finest thing I could do was to dedicate the piece to him,” Stravinsky recalled in his Chronicle of My Life. But work on the ballet had to be postponed once again. “For almost four years I never went near Les Noces, I had other urgent works to complete and Diaghilev, moreover, kept putting back the premiere of the production each year. Finally it was decided to stage this ballet in early June 1923, and Diaghilev asked me to be Bronislava Nijinska’s assistant at the choreography rehearsals in Monte Carlo in March and April. But the most important thing was to decide upon the instrumental format. I put this off every day, hoping that circumstances would dictate something to me at the last minute, when the date of the premiere was finally settled. And that’s what happened. It became clear to me that the vocal element in my work, where the sound is conditioned by breathing, would find backup in an ensemble of purely percussion instruments. That was how I resolved my task with the orchestra, which consists of pianos, kettledrums, bells and xylophones –  instruments with a precise height structure –  and, on the other hand, drums of various timbres and heights, so that there are instruments of indeterminate height. It is completely clear that this sound combination emerged as a result of necessity, it came from the very music of  Les Noces itself, and that I had absolutely no intention whatsoever of imitating the sounds typical of this kind of folk celebration which, apropos, I have never even seen or heard.”

The premiere took place on 13 June 1923 at the Théâtre de la Gaïté-Lyrique in Paris. The production proved an immense success and recalled the first triumphs of Diaghilev’s seasons. One paradoxical point with  Les Noces was that, despite the pure inventive boldness of the choreography, Nijinska’s production was closer to the traditions of classical ballet than the choreography of Fokine or Nijinsky. The new ballet was hailed by critics as the herald of Neoclassicism. Over the course of the 20^th century many choreographers created their own versions of  Les Noces. Among those who have turned to Stravinsky’s ballet are Jiří Kylián, Régis Obadia, Angelin Preljocaj and Tatiana Baganova. Howard Sayette revived Stravinsky’s ballet with Bronislava Nijinska’s choreography for the Mariinsky Theatre. On 24 January Ivan Sitnikov, Soslan Kulaev, Fyodor Lopukhov and Ilya Petrov will be making their debuts in  Les Noces.