Persephone at The State Opera

Ballet theatre attracted Igor Stravinsky throughout his life and he strove unceasingly to find new forms. The melodrama for narrator, solo tenor, chorus and dancers, dating from the composer’s Neoclassical period, was premiered at the Paris Opera in 1934 by the legendary ballet company of Ida Rubinstein. Stravinsky was inspired by the Greek myth of Persephone, daughter of the god Zeus and the goddess Demeter.