| Oedipus Rex |
| During one phase of his career Stravinsky had a particular leaning towards the culture of ancient Greece. The Hellenic world first appeared in his Op. 2, Faune et Berg?e of 1906-07, then in the Pastorale, also 1907. But this interest was most sharply focused during 1926-1934. That was the time of his balett Apollon musag?e, the melodrama Persephone and above all of the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex. This tendency also had its effect on the Duo concertante and later ballet Orpheus. Stravinsky had for some years wanted to write a big dramatic work, but now that he was living far away from his native land, as he would for the rest of his long life, the question of the language in which it was to be cast took on an added importance. Indeed, it is significant that the language was chosen before the subject. He wanted something older than any currently spoken tongue, a language in a way distant, sanctified, and with an incantatory aspect if which he could take advantage in his music. He decided on Latin because, he later said, it "had the great advantage of giving me a medium not dead but turned to stone, and so monumentalised as to have become immune from any risk of vulgarisation."-Source |
 |
 |
| The disparate elements of the score give it a parti-coloured appearance. Much of the choral music has a Russian-flavoured severity, but Creon’s diatonic aria has a Handelian ring to it, while in Jocasta’s chromatic da capo aria one hears refulgent echoes of Italian opera." -Source |
 |
| This site and all related sites are for entertainment and reserch and contains information that anyone can get by using a search engine, such as Google./ This site is a sub-site of SF ART World // Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Licens |
| Roles Oedipus, king of Thebes tenor Jocasta, his wife & mother mezzo-soprano Creon, Jocasta's brother bass-baritone Teiresias, soothsayer basso Shepherd tenor Messenger bass-baritone Narrator speaking role Men's chorus |