About the work
Le rossignol (The Nightingale) is Igor Stravinsky's first opera, a 'conte lyrique' in three acts after Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, to a libretto Stravinsky wrote with Stepan Mitusov. He began work in 1908, set it aside for the ballets The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, and only completed it in 1914; Pierre Monteux conducted the premiere on 26 May 1914 at the Paris Opéra in a Ballets Russes production designed by Alexandre Benois.
Plot
A nightingale enchants the Chinese Emperor with its song but is displaced by a jewelled mechanical nightingale sent from Japan. When the Emperor lies deathly ill and Death appears at his bedside, the real nightingale returns and sings Death away, restoring the Emperor to health.
Cultural significance
Because six years and Stravinsky's breakthrough with the early Ballets Russes scores separate the first act from the last two, the opera shows a marked stylistic break: the first act still follows the colourful idiom of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov, while the later acts sound harder and more modern. Stravinsky later distilled the music of acts two and three into the independent symphonic poem Le Chant du rossignol.