Today’s choice is a poème symphonique by Igor Stravinsky adapted in 1917 from his 1914 opera The Nightingale, based on the story by Hans Christian Anderson. Of it, in his autobiography he said:
I reached the conclusion — very regretfully, since I was the author of many works for the theatre — that a perfect rendering can be achieved only in the concert hall, because the stage presents a combination of several elements upon which the music has often to depend, so that it cannot rely upon the exclusive consideration which it receives at a concert. I was confirmed in this view when two months later, under the direction of … Ansermet, Le Chant du Rossignol was given as a ballet by Diaghilev at the Paris Opera.
It was premiered in Geneva in 1919 where it met with the same sort of criticism (although not as violent) as The Rite of Spring. It was the used as a ballet in 1920 at Paris’s Théâtre National de l’Opéra where the designs were by Henri Matisse.
The plot of the Nightingale is that the bird sings for its life, begging the Emperor of China, who lets it live. The Emperor of Japan sends a mechanical nightingale to the Chinese emperor as a gift, and all fall in love with it, so the Nightingale leaves. The Emperor then starts to die, due to the Nightingale’s absence – the bird returns, persuades Death to let the Emperor live, and then leaves again.
The music is in four sections, taken from the second and third acts of the original opera, and after an opening movement, includes the Marche Chinoise, Chant du rossignol, and the Jeu du rossignol mécanique.
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