HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT, 2018

On the way back to his country, a poor soldier walks with his violin. He meets the Devil,    who offers to exchange the instrument for a book of magic with which he can make a fortune. The soldier accepts, but suddenly discovers that he has lost three years of his   life and is forgotten by those close to him. Thus, full of wealth but unable to find happiness, he will do everything to recover his violin: even steal the Devil.

Constrained by the restrictions imposed by the war, Stravinsky conceives this work on   the model of the itinerant theater, with a reduced instrumentation which can be played     everywhere. He created a work accessible to all and crossing multiple influences: tango, ragtime, pasodoble and even jazz.

To celebrate the hundred years of Histoire du soldat we understand the devil not as a representative of the Evil or the Malevolent, but as the voice of the unconscious, distancing ourselves from a more ludic and fun approach. Thus, from an actual perspective, the good and the evil are not external agents of the soldier but aspects that are part of his personality and a clear proof of human’s complexity.

This «mise en scène» tries to find the balance between the history of a soldier from a hundred years ago and the stories of our contemporary soldiers. Hence the reference  we take from the classical fiction Johnny got his gun by Dalton Trumbo, and the testimonial of the suicidal letter from Daniel Somes, a veteran from Iraq’s war. The aim  is a mixture between the conflict of a man that is leaving a war to enter another war within himself and his demons.

Stage Director: Àlex Ollé (La Fura dels Baus)

Video: Emmanuel Carlier

(more credits) : http://www.alexolle.com/work.php?id=81

L’Histoire du soldat / Ígor Stravinski from Emmanuel Carlier on Vimeo.