Historical Background

Source

The Nightingale: The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen.

The Fox: A collection of Russian folk tales by Alexander Afanasiev.

First Night

The Nightingale: May 26, 1914 at the Théâtre National de l’Opéra, Paris.

The Fox: May 18, 1922, Ballets Russes, Théâtre National de l’Opéra, Paris.

Reception

The Nightingale: Despite perceptions of an immense stylistic disparity between Act I and Acts II and III, soon after the opera’s premiere, Maurice Ravel remarked, "Personally I did not find the difference so enormous. The composer's technique had merely evolved."

The Fox: According to Frances Routh in The Master Musician Stravinsky, the first presentation of The Fox was nothing short of a disappointment for Stravinsky:

"In seeking to recapture the spirit of freshness and spontaneity of the Italo-Russian school, and to rediscover the Old Russian comic opera of Glinka and Dargomijsky, Stravinsky failed to interest a contemporary audience, who were expecting to hear something akin to Le Sacre or Petrushka."

Historical Background

The Nightingale: There is conflicting evidence as to whether Stravinsky began composing The Nightingale in 1907 or 1908. Regardless, he put the work aside after completing Act I in order to concentrate on The Firebird.

In addition to the Firebird in 1910, Stravinsky went on to score two additional ballets Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: Petrushka (1911) and Le Sacre du Printemps (1913), before returning to work on The Nightingale.

The Fox: The commission for The Fox goes back to 1912 when Winnaretta Singer, more famously known as la Princesse Edmond de Polignac, asked Stravinsky to compose a 15-minute concerto for some 30 instruments that could be played in her salon.

She paid the composer 2,500 Swiss francs. Work was delayed by the completion of Le Sacre du Printemps and The Nightingale. At this point, Stravinsky was living in exile in Switzerland, where he needed to capitalize on de Polignac’s commission, and so, returned to his sketches for The Fox.

The work was completed in 1916, and Stravinsky himself made a staging plan, trying to avoid any resemblance to traditional operatic staging or conventions. Rather, he created a new form of theatre in which acrobatic dance is connected with singing, and declamation comments on the musical action.

The piece was never performed in the salon of the princess and was not staged until its Paris premiere in 1922.

Legends, News and Gossip

Stravinsky didn’t write operas in the conventional sense of sung musical drama. In his earlier works (The Nightingale, The Fox), his aim was to invent genres that suited his subject matter and this led to the creation of works that combined dance with speech and/or singing.

He rejected the old 19th-century notion of stage realism in favour of a more open-ended model for which any resource was legitimate as long as it served the central idea of the action.

It is difficult to be categorical about which of Stravinsky’s stage works are operas and which are not. They represent a progression of the form in which the storytelling is achieved not only through singing, but also utilizes other devices such as masks, ritualized action, dance, mime, spoken and sung commentaries to enhance expression.