Stravinsky - Oedipus Rex, Les Noces

Stravinsky’s first notable composition was his orchestral fantasy Fireworks (1908). In 1910 he composed The Firebird, premiered as a ballet by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris, which brought the composer international renown. This marked the beginning of Stravinsky’s creative phase known as the Russian period, famed for the ballet Petrushka (1911) and in particular the ballet The Rite of Spring (1913), which played a seminal role in the history of the choreographic arts and of twentieth-century symphonic music. From 1914 Stravinsky was permanently settled in the West (adopting French citizenship in 1934, and US citizenship in 1945). In his first decade of emigration he produced scores such as The Soldier’s Tale, to be read and for instrumental ensemble (1918), a bizarre reflection of the reality of the recent world war, and the dance cantata Les Noces (1923), which plumbed the innermost depths of Russian folklore.