Patrick Bade
Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, Part 1

Patrick Bade | Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, Part 1 | 05.26.22

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

- [Patrick] Anyway, I’m going to start tonight with a very bold statement. And that is, that Serge or Sergei Diaghilev, was the greatest, the most prolific, the most creative patron of the arts that the western world has seen. He’s responsible for more masterpieces than any Renaissance Pope, any French King, or any rich aristocrat, or industrialist. And he did all of this, really, with virtually no financial resources of his own. I’ll just give you a list of some of the composers and artists whom he commissioned. Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Satie, Respighi, Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, Manuel de Falla, Bakst, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Goncharova, Larionov, , Braque, Sonya and Robert Delaunay, Mary Laurencin, Maurice Utrillo. That’s a fantastic list. And what is so interesting is that not only did these great artists work for him, they often produced their best works for him. Now, he’s genius. I think one really can say it was a genius for sensing talent in other people. It was like a water diviner. He often sensed talent in people that they didn’t know that they had themselves, and he was able to draw it out from them.

So, and of course, in addition to all those artists and composers I haven’t even mentioned the dancers and the choreographers who, under his inspiration, created ballet as a modern art form. He’s born in 1872 into a provincial aristocratic family. His mother died in birth. So the old lady you see in the background here is actually his nurse. The nurse seems to be so important for so many aristocratic or wealthy Russians of this period. So he went up to St. Petersburg, I think initially to study law. He decided he wanted to be a composer, and he took his compositions to Rimsky-Korsakov, who cast an eye on him and said, “Young man, you have no talent as a composer. Do something else.” Then at the age of 22, he wrote a letter that survives, that is the most extraordinary document in that it shows an incredible self-awareness, I think, that very few people of 22 would have. In the letter, he says, “I’m a person with no fear, absolutely no moral scruples, and I have no talent, but I know what I’m going to do with my life. I’m going to be a Misenus. I’m going to be a patron of the arts.” And then he finishes saying, “Well of course I have no money, but the money will come.” And it did.

He managed to find the money. He as a student, he hitched up with a group of arty young students, artists and art lovers, led by the artist Alexandre Benois, who would later become one of his great designers. And Benois, in his autobiography, says… initially they just thought he was some kind of country bumpkin. They weren’t very impressed by him. But he had this extraordinary instinct for knowing the right things to like, and the right people to like. He had a talent close to genius for networking. Whichever city he went into, Paris, London, Madrid, he very, very quickly, like a intercept missile, he went straight for the person who was going to help him. Now if you want to be cynical, about Diaghilev, you could say that the driving forces of his creativity were snobbery and homosexuality. As I said, he always knew the right people and the right things to like. He was often criticised with that. There were people who didn’t like that aspect of him. And the homosexuality was very, very essential, I think to his creativity. Stravinsky, who was resolutely heterosexual mocks much to Diaghilev’s irritation. He was always trying to say, oh, no, no, no, if you want to be a great artist, you have to be open to homosexuality.

Stravinsky described Diaghilev as being surrounded by what he called a homosexual Swiss guard. There was, I think you can say a kind of gay mafia, and he was the king of the gay mafia. There’s a wonderful story that Balanchine, great choreographer I’m going to talk about on Sunday, was one of Diaghilev’s last discoveries, and he was another person who, to Diaghilev’s dismay, was resolutely heterosexual and Balanchine describes a performance of the opera Apollon Musagète with music by Stravinsky and his choreography. And the star dancer of the piece was Serge Lifar, who at the time was Diaghilev’s lover. And so Diaghilev was standing in the wings and watching a performance, and tears were pouring down his face. He was incredibly moved, and Balanchine was moved by this because Diaghilev was quite a frightening type. Not somebody you could imagine moved to tears that easily. So after the performance Balanchine went very shyly to Diaghilev He said, “Master, can I please ask you something? I want to know, what was it that moved you so much? Was it Stravinsky’s music or was it my choreography?” And Diaghilev just said, “Don’t be so silly. I was looking Lifar’s buttocks.”

So, he began his career in publishing, actually, he was an editor of the yearbook of the Imperial Ballet, although he offended somebody important, he got sacked from that job and he took over another job as editor of an art magazine called, “The World of Art”. Now, the 1890s, early nineteen hundreds was the golden age of the art magazine. Got new methods of printing, new colour illustration, colour lithography, photographic illustrations that suddenly made these magazines much more attractive and much more interesting. And so, there is probably a lecture in this, perhaps, in a later series, but the role that these art magazines played around this time in promoting new art movements and the development of Early Modern art and certainly “The World of Art” was one of the best of these magazines. It was promoting Russian art, but it was also introducing Russians to the best in modern art in other countries. And I’ve shown you this picture before. This was the sculpture court of an exhibition of Russian portraits. It was designed by Leon Bakst, and the exhibition was first organised in St. Petersburg under the aegis of the magazine, the World of Art.

And it impressed everybody, mainly because of the extraordinary imaginative way that works of art were presented in a setting rather than just in rows along the wall. And as part of the cultural exchanges that were going on hand in hand with the political alliance between Russia and France, the exhibition was taken to Paris where it caused, again, a sensation. Everybody was very interested in it. And to go with the exhibition, Diaghilev organised concerts of Russian music. And the French were very, very interested in Russian music. One, partly, because it wasn’t German. French composers felt the weight of German influence, particularly Wagner. Wagner was like a looming shadow. They longed to get away from the looming shadow of Wagner. And Russian music, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsokoff, so on was borrowed in. It was fresh, it was new, it was exotic, and it was totally different from Russian music. So it’s a great between Russian and French composers. So there was a series of concerts in 1905, and these were repeated in nineteen-six and -seven on a greater scale. And in this group photograph, you can see in the front row in the centre is Saint-Saëns. And next to him is Rimsky-Korsokoff. And in the middle is the singer .

This is the front row, to her right, to our left of her is Chaliapin. And we can spot Rachmaninov in the back row. He must be kneeling or sitting down because he doesn’t look very tall. But he’s behind Saint-Saens. So these again, were a tremendous success. So he’s building on these successes, becoming more ambitious, and he connects with this man on the right hand, there is Diaghilev on the left. And on the the right is Gabriel Astruc. Gabriel. He’s also a very fascinating character. I would need to do some research, but he is worth a lecture, definitely. He was the son of a very important rabbi. His father was the assistant to the Chief Rabbi of Belgium. But he became a great entrepreneur, a great impresario with a very distinguished career. He commissioned the beautiful Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, one of the loveliest theatres in Paris, which I will talk about towards the end of this talk. And he and Diaghilev, they got on really well together, and they planned everything with meticulous detail. So next big step on the ladder was 1908 when Diaghilev brought the opera, Boris Godunov. This was the first staging of this opera in the West, and it was put on at the Paris Opera, the Salgane in 1908. And it also introduced Chaliapine to Paris. And we’ll be talking about Chaliapine next week.

You can see here the world’s greatest operatic artist, Chaliapine took Paris by storm in an incredible way. The audience were absolutely blown away by him. Mesia Seya, who’s somebody I’m going to be talking about quite a bit. She was kind of a muse to Brazilian artists in her autobiography. She said that she was so deeply stirred by this performance that she really felt something had changed in her life. And she rushed to introduce herself to Diaghilev. And she was a very useful ally for him in Paris. So this was such a success that they decided to come back the next year with, here is Chaliapine in the role of Boris. I played that to you recently when I talked about Boris Godunov. So I’m not going to repeat that. So they’re looking for other roles to showcase Chaliapine’s genius on stage and Rimsky-Korsokoff’s opera, “The Native’s Scoff” was renamed, “Ivan the Terrible”. Again, in order to promote Chaliapine in the opera. But almost as a last minute afterthought, Diaghilev decided, oh, I think I’ll add some ballets to this. You’re sort of padding out the season with ballets. Because ballet is, much to this day, it’s much cheaper to produce than opera.

And also it occurred to him that Russia had something very special to offer to France in the art form of ballet. The great age of ballet in France had been the early to mid-19th century, the Romantic Period. It’s kind of ironic that we associate ballet and France, of course, with the paintings of Degas, the wonderful paintings of Degas. But actually, when Degas was painting the French Ballet, it was really artistically in the doldrums. It become, I would say, a decadent art form. And it was actually, in Russia, technical standards were very high, and ballet was a much more vital art form. So the 1909 season was tremendously important, really, in the history of French culture. Ninety-nine Diaghilev season of the Ballet, Russ, they appeared at the theatre of the Chatelet in May 1909. The whole thing, as I said, very carefully organised by Diaghilev and Astruc. Every detail was attended to. One detail I find rather peccant, is that in those old French theatres, you have a horseshoe auditorium. And on the first floor of the horseshoe, there were 52 seats and Astruc and Diaghilev, well, of course, Astruc would’ve known all the details, not rather than Diaghilev, they invited the 52 most beautiful actresses in Paris to sit in the front row of the balcony. And they took great care that blondes and brunettes were alternated.

So that meant the audience, even before the performance had started, they had something spectacular to look at. So the first evening was the most extraordinary revelation to Parisian dancers in particularly three very great dancers of a quality that hadn’t been seen in Paris for decades. Here on the left, at the top you see Vaslav Nijinsky, to the left is Tamara Karsavina, and to the right is Anna Pavlova. So they were the superstars that were introduced to Paris on this evening. Immediately became world famous. Because you became famous in Paris. It’s a bit like New York later, if you could make it in Paris, you could make it anywhere. So I suppose that the most exciting, two most exciting stars, inevitably in the first season were Nijinsky and Pavlova. They’ve each become a sort of synonym for great dance. Nijinsky is still, I suppose, most famous male dancer who’s ever lived. And Pavlova is still the most famous female dancer. Now, this couldn’t last. And the reason for that was that it became very obvious to Pavlova that Diaghilev was much more interested in Nijinsky than he was in her. And she was a woman of large ego.

She was very ambitious, and she wasn’t going to play second fiddle to a male dancer. And she wasn’t used to that. And traditionally, in 19th century ballet, it’s the female star who’s the star. And the male dancer, more often than not, was just standing around holding her up or lifting her when she needed to be lifted. So she only stayed two seasons with Diaghilev. And then she went off and she set up her own ballet company, which I think was probably, certainly a lot less artistically adventurous than Diaghilev was. That’s an interesting story in itself. She could be another subject of a lecture at some point. So she was replaced by Tamara Karsavina, a very beautiful woman. As you can see, everybody loved Tamara Karsavina. She’s obviously a very nice woman, too. She wrote her memoirs, everybody to do with Diaghilev wrote their memoirs. I think they all realised this was something so special, so extraordinary for so many of them. The period of Diaghilev is 20 years or their involvement with Diaghilev.

Well, nobody lasted 20 years with him, but everybody’s involvement with Diaghilev, that was the most exciting period in their life. And she wrote one of the most articulate and intelligent books, called, “Theatre Street”. Back in London, I have a whole bookcase made up of memoirs of the ballet Russ. But as I said, the big star in the early years. Now this, for the first time, the male star takes centre stage in ballet. And this is Nijinsky who was half Polish, half Russian, and he was borderline autistic. He didn’t really have many words. And people who met him were usually very disappointed. He, on stage, he was the god of dance. It was not just ‘cause his technique was very famous, but his greatness really wasn’t in his technique. It was rather, as with Chaliapine, it’s his interpretative genius. And people who went backstage and saw him getting into his costume and making up, they said there was the most extraordinary transformation at this rather sort of dull, dimwitted young man who looked like a shop assistant, on the left hand side, suddenly was transformed into another creature entirely, once he got the costume and the makeup on.

Oh, here is the technique. His leap was very famous. People swore that he was, let me see, that he was slower coming down than he was going up. Anyway, impossible. They made these impossible claims about his leap. But here it is. But there is something sinister in the relationship of Diaghilev and Nijinsky. I mean, altogether in these days of political correctness, Me Too, Cancel Culture, I think Diaghilev would’ve been in big trouble for a lot of things. And these are drawings by Jean Cocteau, which I think wonderfully capture this sort of svengali quality that Diaghilev had. A total, total control over his lover. And there was definitely something exploitational in the relation. And if only because actually, as it turned out, eventually Nijinsky really wasn’t homosexual. He was just completely dominated by this older man. Cocteau, you can see that Cocteau was, at this time, 20 years old and completely unknown. And he, like everybody else, he was blown away by the first season of the Russian ballet. And he took himself to Diaghilev and he said, Man, please, I want to be involved in this. I want to do something. What can I do for you? And Diaghilev looked him up and down critically, he’d really got a sense of this young man. And he said to him two words, , amazed me, surprise me. And that is so Cocteau. And that is really, could have been Cocteau’s motto for the rest of his life.

That’s what Cocteau did for a living. He amazed people, he surprised people; have a look at his films. My favourite film of all time is “Beauty and the Beast” of Cocteau. And it’s constantly amazing. It has the most amazing special effects that all come out of his imagination. So really, in fact, Cocteau became a kind of hangar-on to Ballet Russ. Eventually he did actually devise a couple of ballets, ideas for ballets, but he was almost like a kind of court jester and commentator on the ballet Russ. So, 1909, they had brought ballets from the repertoire of the Imperial Ballet. They came, it was such a huge success, of course they had to come back the next year. And the next year in 1910 was the first ballet that was actually commissioned from scratch and put together under the direction of Diaghilev. And that was “The Firebird”. And this actually involved one of the most brilliant pieces of talent spotting that Diaghilev ever did.

He’d commissioned, originally commissioned, a score from a distinguished Russian composer, called Diadolph. But Diadolph had creative block and he couldn’t write the score. So Diaghilev had to find somebody else. And he found this very young composer, almost completely unknown, called Igor Stravinsky. So Stravinsky had not at this point, really composed anything that showed that he was going to be one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. So it was, again, an amazing revelation. The designs by Leon Bakst used the chief designer of the early season. The Firebird herself was played by the beautiful Kasarvina. The choreography by Michel Fokine, who also danced in the ballet, here’s Fokine and Kasarvina. And I’m going to give you a taste of Stravinski’s brilliant score, his first masterpiece.

♪ Music Plays ♪

But the other ballet that really caused a sensation and was probably the biggest success of this season, was Scheherazade. The music for this is Rimsky-Korsokoff, was not commissioned by Diaghilev. It had been written sometime before, but he devised a story to go with the score of Rimsky-Korsokoff. It’s a very lurid story, a bit taudry really. It’s an orgy in a massacre, in a harem. So it is orientalist in a rather sort of cliched way. It’s not a ballet that’s dated very well. I have seen it even with the original costumes and sets. But the most wonderful thing about it, really, the sensation, the big sensation, was the design of Leon Bakst. This made Leon Bakst again overnight. Here is Leon Bakst self-portrait. There’s a photograph of him. This is his design for the set of Scheherazade. Gaudy, exotic orientalist colours. It caused such a sensation that it actually caused a revolution in interior design.

It took, they say between 1910 and 1914, if you want to be a fashionable hostess in Paris, you had to make your salon look like a set for Scheherazade with piles of cushions and so on. This is an actual performance. And the costumes had a tremendous impact on Paris fashion. And the timing was perfect. The 1908 to 1909 sees a revolution in women’s fashion that’s associated with the name of Paul Poiret. He completely changed the shape of women. In the the Bel Park, women had these hourglass shape with tightly corseted, pinched-in waist, padded shoulders, padded bottoms and hips. They were in this extraordinary curvaceous shape. But overnight, really, in 1908, Poiret introduced a new look that was more sleek, more svelte, more like a dancer’s body. The corsets went out, the padding went out, and then along comes Leon Bakst that does these absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous costumes. They’re just amazing. The drawings, so beautiful, so sexy. Very voluptuous costumes for all the inmates of the harem.

This is the costume that Nijinsky wore. He’s a sexy slave who is seduced by the mistress of the harem. This was a great role for him. I’ll show you some pictures of him in a minute. Here are more costumes for Scheherazade. And as I said, it immediately had a huge impact on women’s fashions in Paris. You can see this is the leading fashion house of Paquin who brought out dresses in the style of Bakst. And these are actually Poiret fashion illustrations. These turbans became . Now it was certainly, as I said, a great role for Nijinsky. But in the first performances, more interest probably centred on Ida Rubinstein. Ida Rubinstein, she was an independently wealthy Russian woman, Jewish woman. When her parents died, she inherited a lot of money and she decided to launch herself as a dancer without having any real proper training as a dancer. But she was very beautiful. She had an extraordinary kind of exotic presence. She was also a very, very creative impresario. She later set up her own ballet company, which was quite a serious rival to the Ballet Russ.

But she couldn’t dance the sort of things that the other dancers in the company. So really she went into a series of pauses, plastique, just looking beautiful, statuesque, while here, illustrations from the Scheherazade. While Nijinsky lie panther-like, athletic, he leap and whirled around the stage, whirled around her while she was standing in her beautiful poses. Now, what I like to do, normally, when I’m doing a lecture on the Ballet Russ, is to try and make Nijinsky dance for the audience. Diaghilev would never allow Nijinsky to be filmed. We could have film of him. We have plenty of film of Karsavina and we have film of Pavlova. But I think maybe in this case, Diaghilev was right because I don’t really think that the films of Karsavina or Haminer really enhanced their reputation. Doesn’t really capture what was so magical about their performances. But wonderful photographs, series of photographs, were taken of Nijinsky in the various poses he went into for Scheherazade. And so what’s really nice to be able to do, but I can’t do for you in this format, is to play the music and go through, try and make, as I said, try and make Nijinsky dance for you. But, so I’ve just got one still here to go with a little bit of Rimsky score for Scheherazade.

♪ Music Plays ♪

The next season, 1911, brought about a big change. Diaghilev had very cleverly managed to engineer the dismissal of Nijinsky from the Imperial Ballet. Nijinsky was obviously the biggest box office draw, but according to his contract with the Imperial Ballet, he could only get a very short time off to travel with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russ. Well, what happened was that Nijinsky was in… Now which was it? Giselle, yes, it was Giselle. And he had a new costume designed for him, in fact, by Alexander Benois. And it broke with tradition in Russian ballet, that the male dancers had war costumes where there would be like an overhang over what English popular press would call the male lunchbox, the bulge in the front of the tights that was not supposed to be exposed. But the Benois costume really showcased Nijinsky’s sexiness. And the bulge was visible. So the Imperial family attended a performance of Giselle and they sent a message to Diaghilev that they did not want Nijinsky to wear this costume because it would offend female members of the Imperial family.

So Diaghilev immediately thought, “Aha, got it.” So poor Nijinsky pushed out onto the stage wearing the offending costume, and is immediately sacked the next day. Diaghilev sends a telegram to Astruc in Paris saying, “Nijinsky sacked from Imperial Ballet. Monstrous intrigue. Reason, costume. Costume designed Bakst. Used publicity.” Well, it was all a lie because actually the costume, as I said, was designed by Benois, but he knew that in Paris Bakst was big news. Everybody was interested in Bakst, and it would be much more exciting and much more newspaper headlines if the costume was by Bakst. Anyway, that meant that 1911, not only could the Russian Ballet come to Paris, they could tour to other places. So they went down to Montecarlo, and for the first time they came to London, it was the coronation season for George the Fifth. Talk about lucky timing. So there was this very, very brilliant opera season, art season in London, and he could take a advantage of that.

Now, the great masterpiece of 1911 was the Ballet Petrushka. This was a ballet that was devised and designed by Alexander Benois. And it concerns puppets in the St. Petersburg carnival. And it, again, great roles for Nijinsky and Karsavina. Here is Stravinsky with Nijinsky revealed an entirely new aspect of Nijinsky interpretive genius. He plays this tormented, persecuted puppet with sort of jerky movements with choreography by Michel Fokine. So there, there’s Karsavina on the left, Nijinsky on the right, and here is a little bit from Stravinsky’s score.

♪ Music Plays ♪

So that was certainly the great artistic success and French composers Debussy. And so were immediately acknowledged that Stravinsky was an extraordinary rising star on the musical horizon. But the most greatest popular success of the 1911 season was the ballet, Le Spectre de la Rose, The Spectre of the Rose. It’s based on a poem by Théophile Gautier about a young girl who goes to her first ball and she comes home and she’s so excited she doesn’t want to go to bed, and she falls into a chair and she falls asleep. And she dreams. She’s been given this rose and the perfume of the rose comes to life in the form of Nijinsky. And she’s meant to be asleep through all this ballet. So she’s in these very passive poses.

Once again, he kind of whirls around her in a very athletic way and Bakst designed this extraordinary costume, which is a flesh coloured body stocking with petals in different pinks and mauves. And so it shifts as he, as he whirled around the stage, of course the costume shimmered in a sort of iridescent way. Now, there was a mystery concerning this costume, this was continued to be, for as long as Nijinsky was around this ballet was one of the most popular and one of the most performed of the Russian ballets. But every time they went to get the costume out of the costume cupboard, they found that it had lost all its petals and they said, what is going on here? And eventually it turned out that Nijinsky’s servant was stripping the petals off and selling them to the highest bidder and made so much money from the petals of the costume that he was actually able to buy a house with the petals of the costume. So more images of Nijinsky. I mean, it looks very, it looks very effete. He’s playing a very effete character in this rather androgynous.

But as you can see from these pictures, and Nijinsky was certainly somebody who had a sex appeal that was a very androgynous sex appeal that appealed to both men and women. Now, the high point of this ballet, when he’s been whirling around, whirling around the sleeping figure of Karsavina. And at the end of it, he leaps out of her bedroom window and he then, you can’t quite see it in the right-hand side, but he then pulled up his knees and he dropped and had a big pile of mattresses for him to fall on. But the whole audience gasped. It looked like he’d killed himself doing this. And it was so exhausting. You could see this is lovely drawing by Cocteau on the left hand side. You can recognise with his monocle and to the right of him wearing a fashionable Scheherazade-style turban, you can see the rather formidable figure of Mesia Seya. And there is Nijinsky looking like a boxer who’s just fought a round in a boxing match, collapsed in his chair being fanned and given water to recover from his ordeal.

Now we move on to 1912. And so I think Diaghilev is a master of publicity, and he soon came to understand that the value of creating a sensation and even a scandal, having a scandal, his biggest scandal, was the ballet the afternoon of the that was originally a poem by Melaney that inspired a piece of music by Debussy that was actually not commissioned by Diaghilev, but he wanted to make Nijinsky into a choreographer. And he sensed in Nijinsky that he had the talent to do this. So he gave him his first chance to choreograph “The afternoon of a Faun”. Now the faun, I have to tell you, I remember my mother was bitterly upset and disappointed. She always thought the faun was Bambi. And I’d say, no, the faun is not Bambi. The faun is, he’s a satyr, he’s half animal. He’s a hairy-legged half animal, half human. And he spends the entire ballet, it’s not a very long ballet, about 12 minutes I suppose, sexually harassing some nymphs. And at the end of the ballet, he quite visibly masturbates into the veil of one of the nymphs.

So this is not, we’re not talking Walt Disney here, I can tell you. And so, beautiful costume, this amazing highballed body stocking by Bakst again. Nijinsky was packed off to the Louvre because it’s an ancient Greek setting. He looked at Greek vases, he looked at Greek relief sculptures, and what he picked up was this torsion of the body that you see on Greek vase painting where the head is in profile. Very often the torso is facing towards you. And the feet, again, in profile, it’s a very difficult pose to do. Try it, but make sure you’ve got some cushions or a carpet to fall on. You’ll find it’s very hard to even stand up doing this. And certainly, all the way through this ballet, the dancers there, there’s nothing virtuosic. I mean, they’re not leaping or whirling or anything like that, and they’re mostly moving quite slowly, but they have to move holding these poses with the torsion of the body; is incredibly difficult for dancers to do.

And it needed an enormous number of rehearsals for them to be able to do it. Here are costumes by Bakst, the nymphs, Nijinsky as the faun. Now what happens at the end is that the nymphs flee and one of them drops her veil and the faun picks up the veil and he moves very slowly towards a rock. He lays the veil down on the rock, and then he lies on top of the veil and he performs pelvic jerks. In other words, he’s simulating masturbation into the veil. Now, even in Paris that was going some in 1912 and audiences could not believe what they were looking at. As the curtain came down, a riot broke out. As can only happen in a French theatre audience, they really love a good riot. Here he is. So I’ll play you just the opening. Again, I can’t do what I normally do, which is to show him going through the motions to the music. But here is the opening of the ballet, “Afternoon of the Faun.”

♪ Music Plays ♪

So sort of drowsy, sensuous atmosphere evoked by the music. One of the people who, there was, I said there was a major, major row that went on the French newspapers with people taking sides as they loved to in France. And one of the people who stuck up for Nijinsky and defended him was Rodin, and Rodin was very fascinated by dancers altogether and dance. And he wanted to make a life size statue of Nijinsky in the role of the faun. And initially Diaghilev agreed to this, and Nijinsky went for regular poses. And he goes on very well with Rodin. And one day they had lunch and they had a few glasses of wine. And so Rodin said, “Well, I really think I’d like to take a nap.” And Nijinsky said, “All right, I’d like to take a nap too”. And so Diaghilev arrived and was scandalised to find his lover sleeping with Rodin, but I don’t think there was anything sexual going on.

But anyway, that was the end of the project. And all that we have is, are these little maquettes. So, but the impact of it, “The Afternoon of the Faun”, it’s so original, you can say it’s really the first modern ballet. And the choreography was so original, had a tremendous impact on the visual arts, especially sculpture. This is one of the relief sculptures, which you can see shows a faun in profile by . Paul which was opened the following year in 1911. And there’s Art Deco Statuette on the right hand side. You can see it becomes a kind of cliche of Art Deco really, to have this pose with the torsion of the body, head in profile and the torso facing the viewer. Now, the huge, huge scandal around “The Afternoon of the Faun” eclipsed the other ballet on a classical theme that was launched in 1912, which was Daphnis and Chloé with a score by Maurice Ravel, here you see Nijinsky and Ravel playing the piano together. They got on very, very well. And actually after Diaghilev broke with Nijinsky, because he married a woman, to his horror, most people turned their backs on Nijinsky.

One of the few on Nijinsky, one of the few people who really stuck by him and supported him was Maurice Ravel. So it’s the the Daphnis and Chloe, what is remembered from today, of course is Ravel’s score, which I think is one of the most ravishing orchestral scores ever written, ever. I would like, actually, I think I’m not going to play it you, but partly because it’s so soft, I’m not sure it’ll come across, but go on YouTube or listen to the opening of the second part of Daphnis and Chloe by Revel. It’s a magical evocation of dawn with the drifting of the birds. It’s just the most gorgeous, wonderful thing. So Diaghilev have actually commissioned two of Revel’s greatest scores: Daphnis and Chloe, and later “La Valse”. But he never really seems to have appreciated Ravel and in fact didn’t even use the score for Laval. He rejected it.

So as the the choreographer of Daphnis and Chloe was Fokine, and he was so miffed that so much rehearsal time had been given to “Afternoon of the Faun”, and that his ballet had been eclipsed, that he had a huff and he flounced out. Well, that was fine by Diaghilev, suited his plans, absolutely, because Diaghilev could then, his great ambition, which he actually only achieved twice, was to have star dancer, lover, and chief choreographer in one person. That was very economical and very practical. He managed it for a while with Nijinsky. And he managed it again a few years later with Léonide Massine. And so Nijinsky’s next ballet was called “Jeux, Games”. And it’s the first ever modern costume ballet. And people are wearing tennis costumes of 1913. And this is inspired, this was Nijinsky’s idea. And he got the idea. He was in London, as usual, of course, Diaghilev knew or very quickly found out who are the right people, who are the right people and the right people in 1912, 1913 were the Bloomsbury set. So he got in with the Bloomsbury set and on one occasion he and Nijinsky were invited to some afternoon event in Bloomsbury, in Russell Square in the heart of Bloomsbury. And in those days, in Russell Square, there was a tennis court and they watched Duncan Grant playing tennis with young women. And what fascinated, cause Duncan Grant, I’m sure you all know Bloomsbury.

The quip, Bloomsbury was people who lived in squares and loved in triangles. And one corner of every triangle was always Duncan Grant, who was a very beautiful young man and bisexual and was into all sorts of very complicated love affairs. And Nijinsky, whose Diaghilev was incredibly jealous and watched him like a hawk, made sure that nobody ever came near him. But on this occasion, Nijinsky was watching Duncan Grant flirting with the women. And he obviously thought, oh yes, that really interests me. And that’s really the subject of the ballet. It has the most wonderful, it was the last major orchestral score that Debussy wrote and has really become a kind of cult score with many, for many later composers. Again, I think I’m not going to play it to you because we’re running out of time and it’s also very quiet. Well, my last two musical excerpts are not quiet. I don’t have that problem. So in 1913 Diaghilev commissions from Stravinsky, a score for a ballet about human sacrifice in pagan Russia, that is “The Rite of Spring”, Sacre du printemps. And this is, I still think this is Stravinsky’s greatest masterpiece, one of the most extraordinary masterpieces of the 20th century. Really, the corner of modernism, rather in the way that say the Causos has the same role in music that Picasso has in the visual arts.

Everything changes after this ballet. So this is a drawing by Jean Cocteau, who as usual, he was sort of in attendance as observer and court jester for Diaghilev. And this was an occasion where Stravinsky played the score of “The Rite of Spring” on the piano for the benefit of Diaghilev. And the young conductor Pierre Monteux who was going to conduct the premier, and they of course they were, Pierre Monteux later said, oh, he was really shocked by it, the violence, incredible distance, incredible aggressive violence of this music was some, nothing had been heard like this ever before. So here is actually an excerpt of a piano reduction, to give you a sense of what they heard when Stravinsky demonstrated it to them on the piano.

♪ Music Plays ♪

Ever smart, he knew he’d got a new scandal on his hands. The choreography by Nijinsky, also as it was just as original, as bold and incredible as Stravinsky’s music with all these angular, jerky movements. The opposite of the traditional idea of ballet with exquisitely graceful young women floating around in tutus. And the first performance was in the newly opened Theatre du Champs-Élysées. And I’m sure to Diaghilev’s delight, it caused a really serious riot. People were physically, they were shouting, people were physically attacking one another in the audience. There were supporters and there were people against it. And the noise from the audience was so huge that the dancers on the stage couldn’t hear the music from the orchestra pit. So Nijinsky had to stand in the wings. He had to shout the cues to the dancers so that they knew what they were supposed to be doing. And when you think this is actually one of the loudest orchestral scores ever created for a classical orchestra.

So that’s it for today. I’m going to carry on next week with the story of Nijinsky’s break for freedom, a great and tragic love story. And then the final years of Diaghilev. That will be on Sunday. So let’s see what we have for questions and comments.

Q&A and Comments

Q: How were homosexuals treated in Russia? A: Well, I suppose it depended what part of society you came in. There is a story I didn’t tell you about Tchaikovsky, where when his homosexuality became known that there is a theory, and I think it’s quite well documented, that he was ordered to commit suicide and that he did so in a really horrific way, by drinking water infected with cholera.

Q: Is Diaghilev’s walking stick just a fashion statement? A: No, I don’t, well, I’m not sure. I think it probably is a fashion statement. I don’t think he had a medical problem with the walking.

Matisse of course is very much part of this, the riot of colour, the love of exoticism goes very well with it.

Q: Did they not cover their breast wearing those costume? Was this acceptable at the time? A: No. It’s funny how, well, well it was not usually considered acceptable to expose nipples, are you were talking about women, but you was quite, if you went to the opera, women would be wearing very, very low cut dresses, You say I know.

Well, you say how can a culture you describe to unleash… well look at Germany, the most sophisticated cultured nation in the western world, the nation that gave us the greatest music and look what they unleashed. That’s all I can say to that. The Art Gallery of Ontario exhibited works of Florine Stettheimer. Several paintings were influenced by her scene Nijinsky. Well, as I said, he did have the most enormous impact, really, on the visual arts, particularly, I would say, on sculpture. Isaiah Berlin writing about genius wrote that when you asked how he managed to leap so high, that Nijinsky was said to have replied, why you should come down immediately. I stay in the air a little before you return, why not? He was said to be able to do that. And lots of people described being able to do that, but of course it’s physically impossible.

Q: What role did the Czars play? A: I don’t think that Nicholas the Second was actually very cultured, but there were his, certainly his uncles, the Grand Dukes, they were very interested, well, shall we say, they were more interested in dancers than they were in the dance. I’m just trying to just think of, there was a very great dancer who was actually never danced for Diaghilev and was an enemy of Diaghilev. I’m trying to, somebody will know, and I know there’s somebody out there who knows who this is, and she was the mistress of two uncles of the Czar. And somebody once said to Madam, you must be so proud to have two Archdukes at your feet. And she very duly replied, “But don’t I have two feet?” And she later married one of them. Her name will come back to me in a minute.

The name of the travel company is Kirker, K-I-R-K-E-R. And as I said, it will be a very, I don’t think there’ll be a maximum, I think of 12 people on that trip. And we’ll have a lot of fun. Ravel, you don’t have to tell me. Ravel was such a genius. I revere him. And I just think that is the most wonderful… You don’t have it, go get the CD or download it. It will enrich your life. It’s fabulous. Good, Marjorie? I will, I think, is it 13th? Yeah, you are right. I look forward to meeting you there and guarantee we will have lots and lots of fun. Yes. “Rite of Spring” certainly did create a riot.

Q: Is there anybody today who you think is as amazing as Diaghilev? A: I’m not sure if anybody’s as amazing as Diaghilev. I think Wendy’s pretty amazing, to tell you the truth. She is a sort of Diaghilev today.

It’s an unbelievably sad story of Nijinsky. I mean, I first became in an interested in all of this, reading his biography by his wife, Ramala Nijinsky. I was sitting on a train, I was going around Switzerland on a lecture tour and reading this book and sobbing away on the train. It’s just such a terrible story at the end of it. So poignant, actually. It’s hard to imagine Stravinsky writing “Rite of Spring” in 1913. Yes. It still sounds radical. It’s still somehow shocking.

Q: What happened to the ballet? A: Well, the Ballet Russ, of course, after the revolution was in the West, it never, they never went back. But Diaghilev never went back to Russia after 1917. But of course there was a great ballet tradition that continued onto the Communists.

So I wish I could, Bueller, I don’t have the technical means to do that. Kshesinskaia, that’s right, yes. Matilda Kshesinskaia. Thank you. So I knew somebody would knew that. Yes. I love the story about having a grand duke for each foot. Yes, I saw him do it actually. I saw him do it at the Edinburgh Festival. I didn’t really think by that time, I really didn’t think it was a role for him. He was somehow too heavy and too muscular. He didn’t really, even though, because he was gay, he didn’t really suggest the ambiguity of the role. The name of Ravel I recommend, well any Ravel I recommend. He’s just such a fantastic composer. But it’s Daphnis and Chloe, it’s actually the most gorgeous and sumptuous of all his scores. And that seems to be it. And I will continue with Diaghilev and the ballet Russ, on Sunday. See you then.

• Thank you Patrick. See you on Sunday. Take care everybody.

• Yeah. Bye-bye.

• Thanks, Patrick. That was excellent. Thanks.

• [Patrick] Thanks.

• Yeah, take care. Bye. Thanks, Jude. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.