Honegger had a passionate interest in theatre. Prior to
Antigone, he had composed film scores and incidental music for plays as well as an oratorio,
Le roi David, which he called a "dramatic psalm" and premiered in 1921. In Cocteau's words, his adaptation was a "contraction" of the Sophocles play. He described his method of reworking it as like taking "photographs of Greece from an airplane."
Antigone was first performed as a play at the
Théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris in 1922 with sets by
Picasso, costumes by
Coco Chanel, and incidental music by Honegger. Honegger had first offered
Antigone to the
Paris Opéra, but they rejected it as "too advanced" for the French public. Instead, it premiered at the
Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie on 28 December 1927 in a triple bill with
Le pauvre matelot and
Shéhérazade using the sets by Picasso and costumes by Coco Chanel that had been designed for the 1922 performance of the play. The opera subsequently had eight more performances at La Monnaie between January and March 1928. In January 1928 it was also given in German translation at the
Grillo-Theater in Essen, and in 1930 it was performed in English in New York by the
American Laboratory Theatre. While the critical reception of these early performances was generally positive, the audiences were not enthusiastic. == Roles ==