It was first performed under the direction of the composer at the Opéra in Paris, on 30 April 1934 in a double bill with the ballet Diane de Poitiers by Jacques Ibert.

It was also performed at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires under Stravinsky himself in 1936 with Victoria Ocampo, an Argentinean preeminent writer and intellectual, and then in Rio de Janeiro.

Other choreographed versions have included those of George Balanchine, Kurt Jooss (1955), Frederick Ashton (1961),[1] and Pina Bausch (1965).

(Martha Graham's Persephone is accompanied by Stravinsky's Symphony in C.) It was recorded by Stravinsky himself with Vera Zorina and also under André Cluytens (with Nicolai Gedda, 1955, Paris), Sir Andrew Davis (with Paul Groves, London), Michael Tilson Thomas (with Stuart Neill, 1999, San Francisco), and Esa-Pekka Salonen (with Andrew Staples, 2018, Finnish National Opera).

[2] The melodrama tells the story of the Greek goddess Persephone, in three parts: