About the work
Les Noces is Igor Stravinsky's 'Russian choreographic scenes with singing and music' for four vocal soloists, mixed chorus, four pianos and percussion – deliberately scored without a conventional orchestra. Stravinsky began composing it in 1914 but only finished the final instrumentation in 1923; the premiere took place on 13 June 1923 at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique in Paris, choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska with designs by Natalia Goncharova for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
Plot
The work presents four tableaux from a Russian peasant wedding: the bride's dressing and blessing, the bridegroom's leave-taking from his family, the bride's departure from her parents' house, and the wedding feast. Rather than individual characters, ritualised choral and dance scenes drawn from Russian folk customs stand at the centre.
Cultural significance
With its stark, percussive scoring that excludes strings and winds altogether, Les Noces counts among the most radical Ballets Russes works and a break with the decorative sound world of earlier Diaghilev productions. Nijinska's austere, block-like choreography without individualised roles is still staged today as a counter-model to nineteenth-century narrative ballet.