Pulcinella

• Sergei Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to write the music for the Ballet Russes’ new ballet Pulcinella in 1919. Diaghilev and Léonide Massine asked Stravinsky to arrange the musical score from some old manuscripts of music attributed to Pergolesi which they’d recently found at the Conservatory of Naples.¹
  • Stravinsky transformed the source material significantly, and Pulcinella became one of his first forays into neoclassicism. (Later important examples included his Symphony of Psalms and The Rake’s Progress)

“Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course—the first of many love affairs in that direction—but it was a look in the mirror, too.”

Igor Stravinsky, in Expositions and Developments.²

• Pulcinella premiered on May 15, 1920 at the Paris Opéra. Massine was the choreographer and lead dancer, and the scenery and costumes were designed by Pablo Picasso.³
• Visit this page for a full list of movements. 
• Short synopsis 

1. Stephen Walsh, “Stravinsky, Igor,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed April 16, 2021,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000052818.
2. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 113.
3. Walsh, “Stravinsky, Igor,” Grove Music Online.