Oedipus Rex, based on Sophocles’ tragedy, is an established twentieth-century classic. Employing a speaker, male chorus and orchestra, it represents Stravinsky’s 1920s neo-classicism at its peak. Les Noces, an amalgam of ballet and dance cantata in four scenes for solo voices, chorus, four pianos and seventeen percussion instruments, depicts a Russian peasant wedding. One of only two theatrical works by Stravinsky to combine music with a text in his mother tongue, Les Noces is also his most Russian work, in which ritual, symbol and meaning on every level are part of his direct cultural heredity.