PULCINELLA
Music: Igor Stravinsky based on scores by Giambattista Pergolesi
Choreography: Léonide Massine
Sets and Costumes: Pablo Picasso
Libretto: Léonide Massine
Premiere: The Paris Opera House, May 15, 1920
Cast: Léonide Massine (Pulcinella), Tamara Karsavina (Pimpinella),
Vera Nemtchinova(Rosetta), Lubov Tchernicheva (Prudenza),
Stanislas Idzikowski (Caviello), Nicholas Zverev (Florindo), Enrico Cecchetti (Il Dottore)
Ballet of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Pompeii, July 27, 2017
Music: Igor Stravinsky
Choreography: Léonide Massine
Revived by Lorca Massine
Set Design: Pablo Picasso
Reconstructed by Maurizio Varamo
Costume Design: Pablo Picasso
Reconstructed by Anna Biagiotti
Principal Dancers, Soloists, and Corps de Ballet of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
The collaboration of Léonide Massine and Pablo Picasso had been part of Diaghilev's lure.
(This was Picasso's third assignment for Diaghilev, following Parade, with music by Erik
Satie, and Manuel de Falla's Tricorne.) According to the Chicago Symphony's program
notes, "This dream collaboration was no picnic, however. Diaghilev asked Picasso to redo
the designs twice and at one point threw his drawings on the floor and stomped on them. In
the end, according to Diaghilev biographer Richard Buckle, 'the finished result, a Neapolitan
street scene conceived in Cubist terms and painted blue, grey, dark brown, and white, the
houses framing a view of the bay, with a boat, Vesuvius, and the full moon, is one of the most
beautiful stage settings ever made.' (The stunning white floor had to be repainted for each
performance.)
Pulcinella was a triumph--"one of those productions," the composer reported, "where
everything harmonizes, where all the elements―subject, music, dancing, and artistic setting―
form a coherent and homogeneous whole."