About the work
Pulcinella is a one-act ballet with song by Igor Stravinsky, created in 1920 for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. It was premiered on 15 May 1920 at the Paris Opéra, conducted by Ernest Ansermet, with choreography by Léonide Massine and now-famous sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso. Stravinsky drew on 18th-century music then attributed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi – much of it in fact by contemporaries such as Domenico Gallo. The work is regarded as a key piece and the starting point of Stravinsky's neoclassical period.
Plot
The action comes from the Neapolitan commedia dell'arte and revolves around the title mask, Pulcinella. The charming Pulcinella is adored by all the girls, driving the young men of the village into jealous fury and a plot to kill him. By cunning, Pulcinella stages his own mock death and miraculous "resurrection", while his rivals disguise themselves as Pulcinella in a merry game of deception and disguise. In the end all the confusion dissolves into several joyful weddings. Stravinsky's score blends Baroque melodies with modern rhythms, jagged accents and ironic twists into a sparkling whole.
Cultural significance
Pulcinella marks a turning point in Stravinsky's output: the composer called his encounter with this older music the "epiphany through which my entire late work became possible". The ballet is thus seen as the birth of musical neoclassicism, which profoundly shaped twentieth-century music. The legendary collaboration of Stravinsky, Massine, Picasso and Diaghilev also makes the work a high point of the Ballets Russes. From the ballet score Stravinsky later drew the much-performed Pulcinella Suite, firmly anchoring the music in the concert repertoire.