L’Histoire du soldat

“You can’t add to what you have,

You can’t be who you are and who you were at the same time.

You don’t have the right to have everything: it’s forbidden.

One happiness is all happiness; if split,

it’s as if they no longer exist.”

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, The Soldier’s Tale

THE SOLDIER, THE VIOLIN AND THE DEVIL. A STORY READ, ACTED, MIMED AND DANCED. The Soldier’s Tale is a work of circumstance, written and composed in Switzerland during the First World War. The context no longer made it possible to create large-scale works with significant production resources. Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz and Igor Stravinsky therefore came up with a new four-hand arrangement. The Soldier’s Tale was a stage play that initially featured a small fairground orchestra (seven instruments), narrators (the Reader, the Soldier and the Devil) and one or two dancers. In the words of Ramuz to his patron, it is “[…] something like an animated magic lantern”.

In this pocket opera, the librettist and composer revisit both Faust and Lohengrin, focusing on the soul of a poor soldier-doctor who, by trading his violin with the devil, obtains a book that foretells the future. The price of this wealth? The destruction of past and present. In her staging, Karelle Prugnaud adopts a radical approach by combining disciplines and genres. Using circus arts as well as cabaret, she rereads this tale and creates a mise en abyme, reflecting on war, love and death.