The summer of 1909 saw the invasion of Russian art into Europe. Western Europe I should have said to be correct. Any Russian, speaking spontaneously, would have said ‘Europe’ to designate the countries of the west of our frontier, but instinctively we set ourselves apart. Little was known about us outside our domain. A few amiable specimens of the race were welcomed abroad. The whole of our vast country to the average occidental mind still remained a land of barbarians. Russia, crude and refined primitive and sophisticated, the country of great learning and appalling ignorance; Russia of immense scale, no wonder that Europe would not attempt to understand you, to your own children enigma. Though perhaps the best manifestation of this complex and vital temperament, Russian art was hardly known outside its own country. A year before Diaghilev had organised in Paris the picture exhibition, Mir Iskoustva, and a few representations of Boris Godunov. He was now forming a troupe of ballet and opera to venture a whole Russian season in Paris. Naturally, his intention was much discussed in our circles. There had been before a few instances of a small troupe headed by a star going to dance aboard. Those were economical little efforts in the nature of small commercial enterprises. Nothing so ambitious had every been thought of; and, though Theatre Street and the Maryinsky hummed with excitement, no one as yet dreamed that were soon to set our mark on European art.
BB :: 15 min
Piano
Sheherazade movt
Rimsksy-Korsakov 1884 & 4 June 1910
CC :: 3 min
Actor
Rimsky Korsakov
I believe in his early youth Diaghilev studied composition; he wrote symphonies and submitted them to the judgement of Rimsky-Korsakov. I was told he had also studies singing at one time. No doubt superior education, breeding, refinement of taste contributed to making Diaghilev what he became eventually; but these were minor factors. Some dabbling in art, enlightened understanding – the incontestable qualities of our gentry rarely served a greater purpose than forming so many amiable dilettanti. By luck or by a dispensation of Providence, the personal ambitions of Diaghilev received no encouragement; he was saved for a unique task. I can only speak of Diaghilev from the time I came into contact with him, that is speak empirically. My fond vision supplements the lack of positive knowledge as to the precocious growth of his intellect. I see him as an infant Hercules doing might deeds straight out of the cradle. The cradle of Diaghilev’s careers was the foundation of Mir Iskoustva (The World of Art). A young man then, he already had the grasp of the absolute, an unmistakable attribute of genius. He distinguished between transient and eternal truth in art. When I knew him, he was unerring in his judgement; artists believed implicitly in his opinion. It pleased him to divine a seed of genius in his opinion. It pleased him to divine a seed of genius where a lesser intuition would see eccentricity only.
DD :: 10 min
Soprano & Piano
Songs :: Ravel; Poulenc; Debussy
EE :: 4 min
Actor
Ravel and Debussy
I never could get rid of that slight tremor of shyness on first meeting a celebrity, inspite of ample practice, for in Paris, which Diaghilev justly regarded as the climax of our season, not only was the Russian Ballet commercing daily with the great people, but is also joined hands with the creative artists of Paris in comprehensive collaboration. During the first period of the Russian Ballet, the pre-war one, only Paris had a share in its creative work. With the exception of Debussy, who never departed from a certain detachment of attitude, other eminent musicians and authors who came into contact with us delighted in following the various stages of production. There was nothing Olympian about Ravel; obligingly he would come to my help in the difficult rhythmic passages of his score.
There were many stumbling-blocks in the music of Daphnis and Chloe. In sonority suave, noble and clear as a crystal spring, it had some nasty pitfalls for the interpreter. There was a dance in it for me in which the the bars followed a capricious cadence of ever-changing rhythm. Fokine was too maddened, working against time, to give me much attention; opn the morning of the performance the last act was not yet brought to an end. Ravel and I at the back of the stage went through – 1 2 3 – 1 2 3 4 5 – 1 2, till finally I could dismiss mathematics and follow the patterns of the music.
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Both Debussy’s L’Apres-midi d’un Faune and the new Stravinksy's Sacre du Printemps were of the same nature as the Pre-Raphaelite movement and revolutionary as well. Fokine had amplified the scope of plastic possibilities; he had broken through the unique formula hitherto enclosing ballet; but his work was progressive, his standard of beauty essentially the same as his predecessors. Against the accepted harmony, softness, roundness of line, the vision of archaic Greece, as evoked by Nijinsky in L’Apres-midi d’un Faune and the Sacre du Printemps, interpreting with angular jerky movements, the stone age of prehistoric tribes, stood as a direct challenge. In these two works of his, Nijinksy declared his feud against Romanticism and bid adieu to the ‘beautiful’. In his next ballet, Debussy’s Jeux, he made an attempt to find a synthesis of the twentieth century. ‘We will date it on the programme 1930.’ Said Diaghilev. This ballet had been given in 1913. Then was the noonday of futurism.
FF :: 15 min
Piano & Flute
L'Apres Midi D'Un Faune
Debussy 22 May 1894 & 29 May 1912
I N T E R V A L :: 20 min
GG :: 15 min
Piano
Petrushka
Stravinsky 13 June 1911
HH :: 5 min
Actor
Stravinsky ; Ballet Ruses Touring
‘Mark him well’ Diaghilev pointed to Stravinsky. ‘He is a man on the eve of celebrity.’ This remark was made on the stage of the Paris Opera while we were rehearsing Firebird. A few days later Stravinsky’s fame blazed out. At home Stravinsky had been practically unknown. Diaghilev, after hearing his first opus at a concert, commissioned him to write the music for Firebird. In the winter preceding our second season abroad, we spoke of Stravinsky as a Sergei Pavlovich’s new discovery. Ida Rubinstein was numbered among his early ones. Diaghilev unhesitatingly defined the promise of her remarkable countenance. In the roll of celebrities his hand has written many names. Diaghilev’s exploration for new talents did not exclude his respect for those fully recognised; but he could not help seeing a potential gem. That search for any manifestation of beauty accorded so well with his temperament; for, hardly his task accomplished, the impetuous spirit shifted it off to press forward towards a new one. A link had been formed between Diaghilev and me by our first collaboration. To suit his purpose he had need of a young receptive personality, of a clay unhardened in a final shape. He had need of me and I had implicit belief in him.
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So for five consecutive years, Diaghilev’s enterprise, the Russian Ballet, followed it routine of seasons and the ‘Rtizonian’ world, as it has been characterised, partly or bodily represented in each of the respective towns marked by vogue to be the right place for the time of year. There were places, however, this world did not venture to visit in its smart peregrinations. We embarked for South America in the autumn of 1913. I well remember my reluctance to go there. By this time Diaghilev had accepted my little revolts and took them as an unavoidable drawback in an otherwise meek and amenable woman. The sea voyage and the alarming thought of going to the Antipodes were at the bottom of my unwillingness and a feeling of dizziness overtook me every time I looked at the Terrestrial Globe and thought of South America. Diaghilev induced me to accept this offer by saying that even he, hating sea voyages, would go there and that it would be as smooth as a pond. So it was during the whole of the eighteen days on board, but Diaghilev did not come; he had misgivings at the last moment and went to the Lido instead. People say that a Gypsy story teller told him that he would die by water. He did, in Venice on the Lido and buried by Coco Chanel on the San Michele Island graveyard.
It was an uneventful trip but for Nijinsky’s wedding.
JJ :: 5 min
Flute
Syrinx
Debussy 1913
KK :: 5 min
Actor
Massine
On the first night of Debussy’s Jeux the same disagreement, only less noisy than that of L’Apres-midi d’un Faune, obviously divided the audience. What Debussy had thought of the interpretation of his music I don’t know. He was reported to have said pourquoi? But it might have been evil tongues who reported it. To me he did not comment on the production. He often invited me to sit by his side. Madame Debussy and his little daughter usually came with him. He was so gently courteous, so devoid of pose and consciousness of his importance, so sincere in his admiration for the straightforward charm of the romantic ballets, for which he praised me, that in spite of this forbidding brow, in spite of his being an unfamiliar celebrity, I enjoyed out brief talks. But is was "oui Maitre, vous avez raison Maitre"… I was talking to an Olympian.
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After a lapse of five years I rejoined Diaghilev in 1919. On our reunion after the war, Diaghilev and I talked of our respective experiences. He told me of the difficult times he had trying to carry on the enterprise.
I was impressed by the amazing development of Massine. I had first seen him in 1913. His very lack of virtuosity in those days lent pathos to the image he created, an image of youth and innocence. I found him now no more a timid youth. Our first collaboration in The Three Cornered Hat, and then Pulcinella, showed him to be a very exciting master. He now possessed accomplished skills as a dancer, and precocious ripeness and uncommon mastery of the stage singled him out, in my mind as an exceptional ballet-master.
On the first performance of the Three-Cornered Hat Daighilev welcomed me with a wreath that bore the inscription ’In celebration of the day on which you returned to your father’s embrace.’
LL :: 15 min
Cello & Piano
Pulcinella & Cello Suite Italienne
Stravinsky 15 May 1920/1932 arr
MM ::3 min
Actor
Diaghilev Finale
A link had been formed between Diaghilev and me by our first collaboration. To suit his purposes he had need of a young, receptive personality, of a clay unhardened in a final shape. He had need of me, and I had implicit belief in him. He enlarged the scope of my artistic emotions; he educated and formed me, not by ostentatious methods, not by preaching of philosophising. A few casual words fetched a lucid conception, an image to be, out of the dark. Often did I sadly ruminate as to what he could have done for me had he tried systematically to educate my mind. Who knows, perhaps these peripatetic lessons were what I needed most. Reasoning, logical conclusions never helped me; the more I reasoned, the fainter grew the image I tried to focus. My imagination would set to work only by the action of some hidden spring. I had but a slender luggage of real experience. The emotions called forth in embodying the tragic of which my parts had a large share could not be potential ones. By uncanny intuition Diaghilev could set in motion these hidden springs, of which I had no key as yet.
NN :: 5 min
Soprano & Piano
Pulcinella :: Andantino: se tu m'ami
Stravinsky 15 May 1920
