NOTES FROM A COLLABORATION: COCTEAU AND STRAVINSKY'S OEDIPUS REX

Abstract

In 1925 Cocteau received a request from Stravinsky to write a libretto for a work based on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. After going through various revisions, Cocteau’s libretto was eventually translated into Latin before Stravinsky set it to music, with only a series of narrations for the character of the Speaker remaining in French. Various aspects of the performance history of the work contribute to a sense of Cocteau’s progressive elision from it. Then, in his Dialogues (1963), Stravinsky made a number of criticisms of the text of the narrations, although it is significant that it is often the translation by E. E. Cummings that he quotes. The accuracy of, and justification for, these criticisms is examined, along with the reasons that might have led Stravinsky to make them. In 1925 Jean Cocteau received a request from Igor Stravinsky to write a libretto for a work based on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Stravinsky had seen Cocteau’s adaptation of Antigone (1922), and its austerity and compression suited the atmosphere he envisaged for his new composition, which, from the outset, he intended should have a monumental character. This was not the first attempt at a collaboration between Cocteau and Stravinsky. The Russian’s three major scores for the Ballets Russes, L’Oiseau de