The Wedding was completed in 1917 but was then subjected to a series of changes of heart by Stravinsky regarding its scoring; he settled on the above forces only in 1923, in time for the premiere in Paris on 13 June that year under conductor Ernest Ansermet and danced by the Ballets Russes to choreography by Bronislava Nijinska.
A later idea was to use synchronised roll-operated instruments, including the pianola; this he abandoned when partially completed because the Paris firm of Pleyel et Cie was late in constructing the two-keyboard cimbaloms, later known as luthéals, he required.
The decision exemplified his growing penchant for stripped down, clear and mechanistic sound-groups in the decade after The Rite (although he was never again to produce such an extreme sonic effect solely with percussion).
"[3] The ballet-cantata has four scenes performed without a break:[4] The work was premiered on 13 June 1923 at the Théâtre de la Gaîté in Paris,[5] by the Ballets Russes with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska.
At the London premiere on 14 June 1926 at His Majesty's Theatre, the piano parts were played by composers Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric, Vittorio Rieti and Vernon Duke.
[7] At a revival of the ballet in London's Covent Garden on 23 March 1962, four composers – John Gardner, Malcolm Williamson, Richard Rodney Bennett and Edmund Rubbra – played the piano parts.
[9] The Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned an arrangement by Steven Stucky for symphony orchestra and premiered it under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen on May 29, 2008, at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
While its premiere in Paris in 1923 was welcomed with enthusiasm,[12] the London performance three years later received such a negative response from critics that, according to Eric Walter White, "The virulence of this attack so exasperated [the novelist] H. G. Wells that on June 18, 1926, he wrote an open letter."
"[13] The pious reaction of Soviet critics such as Tikhon Khrennikov was no surprise: "In Petrushka and Les Noces Stravinsky, with Diaghilev's blessing, uses Russian folk customs in order to mock at them in the interests of European audiences, which he does by emphasizing Asiatic primitivism, coarseness, and animal instincts, and deliberately introducing sexual motives.