Operatic digression on May 2 with Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat, together with the Instrumentalists of the Orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice conducted by Alessandro Cappelletto, directed by Francesco Bortolozzo, capable of adapting the libretto by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz to the stage. A chamber work of extraordinary novelty, for a few instrumentalists (on sight, on stage), but at the same time endowed with an exceptional orchestration, which gives the impression that the musical ensemble is truly enormous, and with a profound and scathing: the soldier, in the relationship with the devil, ends up being each of us. It is not a war story, but it deeply reflects the feeling of war. Stravinsky composed the Historie du soldat in 1918, at the end of the First World War, when Europe was thinking of reborn from the First World War. No one, or perhaps very few, understood the progressive disaster that would lead to the Second World War two decades later. He wrote this work for seven instruments, a reciting voice and a dancer for a practical as well as dramatic reason: to have a composition with a very strong impact, but at the same time slim, suitable for going to all squares, referring to the tradition of traveling theaters. With an almost non-existent scenography, even to be carried in a trunk or suitcase. And he won the bet, building a very solid and at the same time transportable and ‘light’ work.
