L'Histoire du soldat

In 1918, shortly before the end of the First World War, Igor Stravinsky found himself stranded in exile in Switzerland, where he invented a new stage format: Small, mobile, and affordable — a traveling theater with a small ensemble, no set, no orchestra pit, yet combining music, text, and dance. With it, he ventured onto entirely new artistic paths.

L’Histoire du soldat is based on an old Russian folktale. A soldier sells his violin — and with it his soul — to the devil in exchange for wealth, prestige, and the love of a princess, only to lose everything in the end. The moral: One cannot have everything, and the loss of the past is irreversible. Today, L’Histoire du soldat is regarded as a key work of musical modernism.