The Nightingale (opera)

This article is about the 1914 Igor Stravinsky opera. For the 1982 opera/musical of the same name by Charles Strouse, see Nightingale (musical). For the 2012 La Jolla musical, see The Nightingale (musical).

The Nightingale
Opera by Igor Stravinsky
Set design for the premiere by Alexandre Benois
Descriptionlyric tale
Native title
Russian: Соловей
Librettist
  • the composer
  • Stepan Mitusov
Based on"The Nightingale"
by Hans Christian Andersen
Premiere
26 May 1914 (1914-05-26)
Palais Garnier, Paris

The Nightingale (Russian: Соловей, romanized: Solovey) is a short opera in three acts by Igor Stravinsky to a Russian-language libretto by him and Stepan Mitusov, based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen: a nasty Chinese Emperor is reduced to tears and made kind by a small grey bird. It was completed on 28 March 1914 and premiered a few weeks later, on 26 May, by the Ballets Russes conducted by Pierre Monteux at the Palais Garnier in Paris. Publication, by the then Paris-based Éditions Russes de Musique, followed only in 1923 and caused the opera to become known by its French title of Le Rossignol and French descriptor of conte lyrique, or lyric tale, despite its being wholly Russian.