Stravinsky - L'Histoire du Soldat

Le Studio - Philharmonie, Paris, Sunday 27 January 2018

Actor/narrator: Eric Ruf. Dancer: Alban Richard. Soloists of the Orchestre de Paris and the Ensemble Intercontemporain.

When I was a teenager, on one of my first forays abroad, I had the good fortune to be invited to stay with a cultivated Swiss family in Lausanne, who opened up intriguing new worlds for me. They had real paintings, parquet floors, oriental rugs, a grand piano, and what they called their salon de l’art brut, a spare room kept empty but for their own improvised artworks. They introduced me to the first opera I ever knew and owned on record, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which would later play a part in my getting into university, as I talked about Apollinaire's play when discussing the theatre of the absurd during my entrance interview. They also introduced me to Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat, the words to which the whole family seemed able to chant merrily by heart while it was on their gramophone, (which was hidden inside a real period cabinet, something that impressed me immensely at the time). Ramuz’s poem supplied me with a motto I’ve often quoted over the years: Un bonheur, c’ est tout le bonheur; deux, c’est comme s’il n’existait plus, from this lovely passage near the end:

Il ne faut pas vouloir ajouter à ce qu’on a / ce qu’on avait,
On ne peut pas être à la fois qui on est / et qui on était
On n’a pas le droit de tout avoir : c’est défendu.
Un bonheur, c’est tout le bonheur; deux, c’est comme s’il n’existait plus.

DeepL renders this as:

You shouldn't wish to add to what you have / what you had,
You can't be both who you are / and who you were
We've no right to have everything: it's forbidden.
One happiness is all happiness; two is as if it no longer existed.

This weekend I had the good fortune to hear the work live for the first time ever, notwithstanding the special place it had in my memories, thanks to a kind person who, unable to attend, gave me his ticket. The concert took place in the Studio space at the Philharmonie, in a version with a single actor playing all the parts, a dancer on a large, square platform on the left, and the instrumentalists on the right.

The dancing, to my untutored eye, after some very purposeful striding and skipping during the Marche, looked like a cross - jaunty and quite effective - between mime and hip-hop. The bald, bearded dancer changed his own costumes, an assortment of not-at-all-soldierly shirts, tee-shirts, sweatshirts and billowing anoraks, yellow, orange or in variegated prints.

Stravinsky

The narrator, who moved from one spot to another as the tale advanced and had a headset mike (known in France as a “Madonna”), read from a script. I could have done without the amplification, as it created an imbalance between text and music, but I understand it would have been much harder for him to make himself heard, despite the crisp acoustics. I’d also have preferred he’d learnt it by heart, as he and the dancer could have engaged better with the audience if they’d looked at us - and smiled sometimes.

The instrumental soloists played the angular but amiable score with all the virtuosity you’d expect from their credentials. Perhaps because, back when I stayed with the family and first heard the Stravinsky (they also, come to think of it, introduced me to his Ebony Concerto, which would have made a nice companion piece), I played the double bass myself, I particularly admired Nicolas Crosse’s coolly nimble bass playing, the pizzicato especially.

This was a very pleasant way to spend a cosy and, to some extent, nostalgic hour on a wet, chilly January afternoon. So thanks again to my benefactor, and again to the family in Lausanne.