Le chant du rossignol

Stravinsky's first opera, The Nightingale was based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1843 fairy tale of the same name and was set to a Russian-language libretto in three acts told from the point of view of a fisherman.

He was in fact unsure about returning to The Nightingale at all, and this doubt may have led him to create the purely instrumental poème symphonique; in his autobiography he writes: I reached the conclusion — very regretfully, since I was the author of many works for the theatre — that a perfect rendering can be achieved only in the concert hall, because the stage presents a combination of several elements upon which the music has often to depend, so that it cannot rely upon the exclusive consideration which it receives at a concert.

I was confirmed in this view when two months later, under the direction of ... [Ernest] Ansermet, Le Chant du Rossignol was given as a ballet by Diaghilev at the Paris Opera.

[2]The work had its first performance on December 6, 1919, in Geneva, conducted by Ernest Ansermet at the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

The movement list is as follows:[4] The piece's ballet debut occurred on February 2, 1920, at the Théâtre National de l'Opéra in Paris.

"I had destined Le Chant du Rossignol for the concert platform, and a choreographic rendering seemed to me to be quite unnecessary," he says later in his autobiography.

Originally, the choreography was to be Massine's, but when that fell through, Diaghilev chose one of his newest students, George Balanchine, to choreograph the ballet.

He was immediately willing to take the challenge, saying, "I learned the music well, and so ... when Diaghilev asked me to stage Stravinsky's ballet Le chant du rossignol, I was able to do it quickly".