The Times: Review. The Soldier's Tale, Edinburgh Festival
Simon Thompson
★★★★☆
When Stravinsky wrote The Soldier’s Tale in 1918 he scored it for miniature forces because enormous economic dislocation and a global pandemic had made it impossible for a large orchestra to perform together on stage. Sound familiar?
His distillation of the Faust legend, where a soldier unwittingly sells his soul to the devil, certainly fits the slimmed-down resources of both his time and ours, with only seven musicians and three actors to tell the story through narration and music.