Stravinsky The Rite of Spring Stravinsky Oedipus Rex Valery Gergiev conductor Zlata Bulycheva Jocasta Sergei Semishkur Oedipus Ilya Bannik Creon Alexei Tanovitsky Tiresias Alexander Timchenko Shepherd Simon Callow narrator Gentlemen of the London Symphony Chorus London Symphony Orchestra
The premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring has gone down in history as sparking the greatest audience scandal ever known because of its controversial dissonances and intensely driving rhythms. Leonard Bernstein described the piece rather more favourably as containing ‘the best dissonances anyone ever thought up, and the best asymmetries … and whatever else you care to name’. Oedipus Rex is based on Sophocles’ tragedy in which Oedipus unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother, the discovery of which leaves him so distraught that he gouges out his own eyes.
Change of artist Soloist Evgeny Nikitin is indisposed and has had to withdraw from the LSO concert on Tuesday 15 May. We are most grateful to Ilya Bannik for agreeing to appear at short notice to sing the role of Creon / Le Messager in the LSO’s performance of Oedipus Rex .