Kurt Vonnegut & Harry James Cargas, c. 1997

Chris' Note: My thanks to Brian Scheffer for bringing this bit of Vonnegutia to my attention. These pages could not have been possible without his generous assistance.

	Program from the St. Louis '97 staging of Vonnegut's text for L' Histoire du Soldat (190k PDF)
	St. Louis Post-Dispatch feature on the 1997 production (680k PDF)
	New York Times review of a 1993 production featurning Vonnegut's textual adaptation
	Vonnegut's complete text
	Well-done Stravinsky site

Mississippi Mud: God Help You, Mr. Rosewater
By Wm. Stage
· Riverfront Times

March 5-11, 1997. Author Kurt Vonnegut blew in to town a few days last week to premiere ''L' Histoire du Soldat,'' an undated version of Igor Stravinsky's 1917 pacifist musical drama. At 74, Vonnegut is indeed a legend, a hero, a literary god to us boomers. On college campuses in the '70s, every doe-eyed student had a copy of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Breakfast of Champions. The Grateful Dead named their publishing Ice Nine, after the apocalypse-causing substance in Cat's Cradle. Harry James Cargas, Vonnegut's pal and a professor at Webster University, was kind to allow this columnist and avid Vonnegut reader a brief audience. I was to ask three questions.

We met in Cargas' office on the Webster U. campus. Vonnegut is tall, shaggy of mane and baggy of eyes. We shook hands. We sat. Notebook in hand, I led off: ''What is the most dangerous flaw in the American character?''

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Stravinsky Revised, A La Vonnegut
By Philip Kennicott
· St. Louis Post-Dispatch Classical Music Critic

February 27, 1997. The devil may be a bit of a bungler, but in the end you can't outwit him. Common theme in folklore, and in the folk-inspired scenario that Stravinsky used in his 1918 mini-drama with music, ''L'Histoire du Soldat.''

No doubt there were other, deeper social allegories to the flimsy text Stravinsky set, a story of a hapless soldier who trumps the devil once, but loses in the end.

The work was created in a time of necessity, during which Bolshevik coups, military disgrace and economic collapse left many Russians believing that - as in their folk tales - the devil was indeed wandering the world.

Stravinsky needed money, and so took up a project unworthy of him; the results have always frustrated listeners who feel the work should work a little better than it does, and critics, who have laid the blame on the poor literary quality of the drama.

Step in Kurt Vonnegut, who has made Man and his self-inflicted undoing the subject of so much of his life's work. Vonnegut has completely rewritten the text, making it center on the life and execution of World War II deserter Eddie Slovik - the first American soldier executed for desertion since the Civil War.

Vonnegut's new version of Stravinsky's melodrama had its local premiere at a sold-out Loretto-Hilton Center concert Monday night. The production makes of Stravinsky's work a small play in which the central characters are Slovik, two dancers, a Red Cross nurse, an MP and a general. It struggles to capture the mordant satire that one suspects, Stravinsky hoped would come across in the original version.

It succeeds at times and, in a professional production, might succeed thoroughly.

Yet Vonnegut has compacted a very grand and preachy drama into a too small a space, and the admirable young actor in the Webster University production didn't quite find the right balance of satire and sincerity, the mix of slapstick and outrage in Vonnegut's ambitious text.

Vonnegut has spent his life defining this precarious balance; it may be too subtle a concoction to work within the confines of Stravinsky's musical framework.

Brian Scheffer: ''This review [above], in my opinion, is a bit harsh. I thought the balance of satire and seriousness was pulled off rather well. The audience, however, at the SLU High School performance was a bit... dense, I suppose. My friends and I seemed to be the only ones laughing at times at things that obviously were intended to be humorous.''

VONNEGUT'S ADAPTATION:  L' Histoire du Soldat  ·  NY Times Review   St. Louis '97 Program  ·  St Louis Post-Dispatch Feature  ·  Complete Text RELATED TOPICS:  Dramatic Works  ·  Complete Writings

© 1997-2005 Chris Huber, Durham NC (USA)  ·  Last Updated 02/05/05

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