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.

Continue


reviewHannah Kingpress