Diabulus in Musica: la configuración híbrida de Mefisto en la obra de Igor Stravinsky

On November 28th, 1909, St. Petersburg held a concert -“Fausto in music” –commemorating the 160th anniversary of the birth of Goethe. Igor Stravinsky himself offered his orchestration of the “Songs of the flea and the rat”, composed by Mussorgsky and Beethoven (Op.75 / 3). These orchestrations reflected a first reflection on the Mephistopheles character, providing a unique timbre and dynamic interpretation of the texts worked by both composers. These compositions signaled the beginning of a “devilish” and lasting relationship between the composer and Mephisto, who played a decisive role in two of his later works: L’Histoire du soldat (1918), hybrid composition based on a Ramuz’s text designed to be read , played and danced, and first introduced under the direction of Ansermet, and the opera The Rake’s Progress (1951), with a libretto written by W. H. Auden and inspired on the paintings and engravings of William Hogarth. This paper will examine the plurality of genres and forms employed by Stravinsky for the representation of a figure that under multiple disguises survives in popular culture: Mephistopheles. We will analyze its configuration both as an orchestral lieder as a music for narrator and orchestra, in order to to finally discuss the operatic drama, whose seed comes out of Auden’s poetic interpretation of Auden of Hogarth’s engravings.