Jeu de cartes (also known in English as A Card Game,[1] Game of Cards,[2] or Card Party)[3] is a ballet in "three deals" by Igor Stravinsky based on a libretto he co-wrote with Nikita Malayev, a friend of his eldest son Théodore.[4] It was commissioned in November 1935, written late the next year, and premiered by the American Ballet at the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York on 27 April 1937 with the composer conducting. Its European premiere followed on 13 October at the Semperoper in Dresden, where Karl Böhm conducted the Staatskapelle Dresden.[5]
The idea of basing the ballet on a game of poker did not occur to Stravinsky until after August 1936, when the story took shape. The main character is the deceitful Joker who fancies himself unbeatable owing to his ability to transform into any card.
- ^ White 1966, p. 393.
- ^ "Russian Violinist Booked at Philharmonic". Los Angeles Times. 6 February 1938. Archived from the original on 27 January 2023. Retrieved 26 January 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Notes of Music and Musicians". Chicago Tribune. 15 September 1940. Archived from the original on 27 January 2023. Retrieved 26 January 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Nicholas Fox Weber, Patron Saints: Five Rebels Who Opened America to a New Art 1928–1943, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014
- ^ Evans, Joan (2003). "Stravinsky's Music in Hitler's Germany". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 56 (3): 525–594. doi:10.1525/jams.2003.56.3.525. JSTOR 10.1525/jams.2003.56.3.525.