Georg Baselitz at the Salzburg Festival 2025 the artist designs marionettes and sets for Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Histoire du Soldat’
Georg Baselitz designs marionettes and sets for Igor Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale), a co-production of the Salzburg Festival with the Salzburg Marionette Theatre (Puppet Theatre), directed by Matthias Bundschuh.
The idea for the collaboration emerged in 2023, driven by a shared desire to address a contemporary theme while reflecting Baselitz’s long-standing passion for Neue Musik. Histoire du Soldat proved an ideal meeting point.
Marking his first foray into marionette theatre, Baselitz has created 15 raw, minimalist figures whose distorted physiognomies bring fresh expressive potential to the medium. Each main character is distinguished by a unique colour, applied to their abstract puppet heads. Complementing the puppets, Baselitz has also designed stark black-and-white stage sets in the form of drawn backdrops, amplifying the visual intensity of the production.
Director Matthias Bundschuh, who is already associated with the Salzburg Marionette Theatre ensemble through several projects, is responsible for producing this timelessly topical material. The text is based on the German adaptation by Hans Reinhart and is spoken in its entirety by Dominique Horwitz.
In the wake of World War I, Igor Stravinsky, living in exile by Lake Geneva, sought a new, practical form of music theatre. Collaborating with writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, he created Histoire du Soldat, a two-part theatrical fable based on an old Russian folk tale. The story follows a soldier who trades his violin to the devil for a magical book that reveals the future. Though the soldier gains wealth, he soon realises he has lost his identity and place in the world. No one recognises him anymore, and it’s too late to return to his former life.
Initially conceived for a small, travelling troupe, the piece is modest in scale: a narrator, four performers, and a chamber ensemble of seven musicians. This stripped-down format, born of wartime necessity, spurred Stravinsky to new heights of creativity. He developed complex rhythmic techniques and drew on popular musical styles of the time. Although the Spanish flu disrupted plans for a touring production, the world premiere of Histoire du Soldat in 1918 in Lausanne was not only an essential moment in the history of 20th-century Swiss theatre but also cemented the work’s status as a landmark of musical modernism.
Histoire du Soldat will premiere on 29 July 2025 at the Salzburg Marionette Theatre, followed by seven performances until 3 August 2025, as part of the Salzburg Summer Festival’s programme.
