| Renard | |
|---|---|
| Comic opera byIgor Stravinsky | |
 Stravinsky, drawn byPicasso in 1920 | |
| Native title | Ба́йка про лису́, петуха́, кота́, да барана́ |
| Librettist | Stravinsky |
| Based on | Russian folk tale |
Renard: histoire burlesque chantée et jouée, orThe Fox:burlesque tale sung and played, is a chamberopera-ballet for four male voices and 16 instrumentalists written in 1916 byIgor Stravinsky. Its originalRussian text, by the composer, derives from a folk tale as collected byAlexander Afanasyev — but the piece has no name in Russian, being titled generically instead asБайка про лису, петуха, кота да барана, orTale of the Fox, the Cock, the Cat and the Ram. (As with the composer's previous stage work,The Nightingale, this burlesque tale is known by its French name despite being wholly Russian.) The premiere took place in a French translation in Paris on 18 May 1922. Duration: 16–17 minutes.
In April 1915,Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac, commissioned Stravinsky to write a piece that could be played in her salon. She paid the composer 2,500 Swiss francs. The work was completed inMorges,Switzerland in 1916, and Stravinsky himself made a staging plan, trying to avoid any resemblance to conventional operatic staging. He created, rather, a new form of theatre in which the acrobatic dance is connected with singing, and the declamation comments on the musical action. However, the piece was never performed in the salon of the princess. It was not in fact staged until 1922.
The premiere, a double bill withMavra, was given on 18 May 1922 by theBallets Russes at theThéâtre de l’Opéra, Paris. Other sources indicate 2 June as the date of the premiere.[1] It was conducted byErnest Ansermet with choreography byBronislava Nijinska and decorations and costumes byMikhail Larionov. Stravinsky remained pleased with Nijinska's "acrobatic Renard, which coincided with my ideas... Renard was also a real Russian satire. The animals saluted very like the Russian Army (Orwell would have liked this), and there was always an underlying significance to their movements."
In 1929,Sergei Diaghilev staged a revival with theBallets Russes with choreographed byMichel Fokine. Stravinsky was not happy with the revival, saying, "[it] was ruined chiefly by some jugglers Diaghilev had borrowed from a circus."[2] Stravinsky regrettedChagall's refusal of a commission to do the sets.[3]
This is a moralizing story, a farmyard fairy tale aboutReynard the Fox, who deceives the Cock, the Cat and the Goat; but in the end they catch and punish him. The Cock is twice tricked and captured by the Fox, only to be rescued each time by the Cat and the Goat. After the Cock's second rescue, the Cat and the Goat strangle the Fox, and the three friends dance and sing. It also contains a slight irony relating to religion and the church – to be invulnerable the Fox wears the black gown of the nun (nuns used the privilege of inviolability in Russia).
As in his later balletLes noces, Stravinsky employs here the singers as part of the orchestra, and the vocal parts are not identified with specific characters.
Geneva: A. Henn, 1917;London: J. & W. Chester, 1917;Vienna:Wiener Philharmonischer Verlag. 1917; (asBajka: veseloe predstavlenie s peniem i muzykoj)Moscow: Muzyka, 1973.
Duration c. 15–20 minutes.
Dedication: "Très respectueusement dédié a Madame laPrincesse Edmond de Polignac"
Ensemble:flute (doublingpiccolo),oboe (doublingcor anglais),clarinet (doubling E♭ clarinet),bassoon, 2horns,trumpet, percussion (timpani,triangle,tambourine withbells,tambourine without bells, cylindricaldrum,cymbals,bass drum),cimbalom (orpiano), 2violins,viola,cello anddouble-bass.
The French translation byC. F. Ramuz appears in the originalvocal score. A German translation by Rupert Koller is in the Chester study score and an English translation by Rollo H. Myers in the current vocal score bears the copyright date 1956. It is somewhat modified on theStravinsky conducts Stravinsky recording; a more thoroughgoing revision heard onRobert Craft's 2005 recording is offered as the composer's own.[4] Later, however, he told Craft: "I prefer to hear [it] in Russian or not at all."[5]
There are many discrepancies between full and vocal scores, particularly the PV's extra bass drum beat at the beginning, the study score's downbeat at the start of the allegro (not heard on Stravinsky's recording), the rebarring between figures 21 and 22, and the PV's missing third beat of the bassoon before figure 24.
Stravinsky first developed here an original technique ofcomposition that was almost unknown in the European classical tradition, though quite typical offolk music. The main features of this are the repetition of small, simple melodic phrases (called inRussianпопевки – popevki), often insyncopated rhythm, with an irregularmeter (changing thetime signature almost in every bar); the multi-voiced texture is not a realpolyphony, but rather aheterophony, representingmonophony or a “raggedunison”, where themelody of one instrument is accompanied and embellished with the fragments of the same melody. For example:
key: conductor – petukh (cock; tenor 1)/lisa (fox; tenor 2)/kot (cat; bass 1)/baran (ram; bass 2) – year recorded – first label
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