Patrick Bade
Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, Part 2
Patrick Bade | Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes, Part 2 | 05.29.22
- It’s absolutely gorgeous, but I’m really sad that I have to leave it in two days time.
Oh shame. Well, the good news is that you’re planning on coming back.
Yeah, I’ll be in London for 10 days and then I’m in Vienna for five days and then back in Paris on the 18th.
Oh, sounds great. Well, you’ve got a nice trip plan Patrick. It’s lovely to go back to London and then Vienna’s going to be great.
Yeah, well, I’ll be nice to see Trudy and Anita. That’s the highlight of the week for me, always.
Good. Exactly. Great. Good. Good, good, good. And last week’s presentation when you said presentation is just is fabulous, I have to say.
Oh, good. Thank you. Well, it’s great subject. Fantastic subject, really can’t go wrong.
And what a character.
Yeah. Not nice really, but nice has nothing to do with it.
No, but all the characters around him as well.
Yeah.
You just see when people bring up the best in each other, people bring up the worst in each other.
Yeah.
But yeah, I’m always happy these days when I can actually, participate at the time.
Yeah.
I’m now trying to catch up. ‘Cause often I’m having to work in New York, it’s midday, so it’s very hard for me very often to jump on. But now I’m thrilled to be able to do so. So it’s two minutes past the hour and I’m going to hand over to you. Thank you very much.
Visuals displayed and music played throughout the presentation.
- Thank you, Wendy. And we’re in up to 1913, and I ended last week talking about the scandalous premier of the rite of spring as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. So 1913 marks a major turning point in the story of the Ballets Russes the rite of spring already showed that Diaghilev was moving on in his taste from the somewhat Belle Époque decorative and gorgeousness that was represented by Bakst who you see on the left hand side to a new, tougher kind of modernism. And he was looking at a younger generation of artists that included Natalia Goncharova, that’s a design of 1913. On the right hand side, you can see it’s more primitive, more gutsy really than the delicate Léon Bakst on the left hand side. Now the other major change that came about in 1913 was as a result of Nijinsky’s marriage to Romola Polski. And what happened was that the Diaghilev had an invitation from the church of Colon in Buenos Aires to send his company to South America. And this was a very tempting invitation. The Buenos Aires was the cultural, as far as Western culture is concerned, it was the cultural capital of the Southern Hemisphere. It was the only city in the southern hemisphere with a really major opera house and an incredibly vibrant western cultural life. And people like to go there because it was a very rich country.
You got paid more at the church of Colon than in any other theatre in the world. And there was also the advantage that being in the southern hemisphere, their seasons ran during the European and the North American summer when most artists were unemployed. So this was an offer that was too good to miss, but Diaghilev himself didn’t want to go on the voyage. And the main reason for this was that he had been told by a clairvoyant that he would die on water. And as we shall see, in a certain way, he did. The clairvoyant was right. So Diaghilev very superstitious. He didn’t want to go. So for once, he was not jealously guarding his lover Nijinsky. And while the cat’s away, the mice will play. And what on happened on board the ship was that Nijinsky was walking up down the decks and his eyes fell upon a very beautiful young girl, Hungarian girl, Romola Napolski. Now, according to the book, which you can see the cover of on the right hand side, it’s her biography or her account of her relationship with Nijinsky. As I said, everybody, everybody who had anything to do with Diaghilev they all wrote their book. There are dozens and dozens of these books. And she was the daughter of the most famous and respected actress in Hungary. And when the Belarus arrived in Budapest, she saw Nijinsky on stage and she fell hopelessly obsessively in love with him. And she volunteered to join the Corps de ballet unpaid, just because she wanted to be near her idol. She wanted to be able to see him. 'Cause there was no way she was ever going to get near him, beyond just seeing him perform, seeing him in the distance.
But now was her opportunity. Their eyes met as they walked up and down the decks of the ship and the problem there was a problem that they didn’t have a common language. So they had to get intermediaries to make contact with one another and for Nijinsky to make his marriage proposal. So when they hit land in Monte De Dios they were married. And you can see this was news around the world, that this is an English newspaper, the sketch. And if you use the top, you can see Nijinsky, the marriage man and his bride. You can almost hear the sarcasm there 'cause everybody knew that Nijinsky was Diaghilev’s lover. So Nijinsky, somewhat naively sent a telegram to Diaghilev telling him that he just married that morning. People who were with Diaghilev said, when Diaghilev read it, he literally chewed the carpet. He let out a terrible cry, and he fell on the floor, and he flailed around on the floor and he instantly dismissed Nijinsky from the company. So the Paul Romola, I mean, what a life really. She thought she’d married her God. She thought everything, every wish had come true. But of course, it all turned horribly to disaster. the first World War broke out. She and Nijinsky went back to her native Hungary, where for a while he was interned as an enemy alien. And it was during the war, he began to show signs of mental distress. He had hallucinations, and he was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
So instead of this wonderful life she imagined, she found herself effectively, his nurse and keeper for the rest of their lives. She tried everything, everything she could to cure him. But they went to Sanatoria in Switzerland. They had consulted every doctor, but it was all hopeless. This the very disturbing photograph, you see, very strange photograph. Look at the facial expressions. This is the only occasion after 1913 when Nijinsky and Diaghilev met with one another. And it was at the end of a performance of Patricia, which had of course been one of Nijinsky greatest roles. And the lady in the centre is Kasavana, who had danced with him. This performance took place in Paris in the 1920s. And Nijinsky was brought from his asylum to see the performance. There was just this faint hope that seeing something that was so close to him, to his heart, had been such important in his life, might trigger something in his brain, might bring back his sanity, but it didn’t work when you see these very uneasy expressions and rather fake smiles of everybody in this picture. So Romola had an American passport, and she could have gone to America, but she couldn’t take him with him, was America was very, very strict about not letting anybody into the country with a history of mental illness. So when the second World War broke out, she could have gone to America and been safe, but she didn’t want to leave him. So they stayed together in Hungary and things were okay until, of course, as you know the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, in the spring of 1944.
And suddenly he was in mortal danger on several counts. He ticked a lot of negative boxes for the Nazis. He was Russian, he was a known homosexual, and he suffered from mental illness. Any one of those reasons would’ve been enough for the Nazis to sent him to the gas chambers. And in her book, she tells of an absolutely terrifying experience when they were trying to escape in a car, and they were stopped by German soldiers. And she was just terrified that he might say something. I mean, he in fact, for the rest of his life, he very rarely spoke at all. But there was, he if opened his mouth and spoken, the Germans would have put two and two together and realised that he was inverted commerce mad and Russian and the rest of it. So after the war, they landed up in England. They lived in Virginia Water. This is Nijinsky and Romola in old age. And this is very famous photograph when a journalist and a photographer came to interview her, I suppose not him, when he saw the camera. And he suddenly did his famous leap, demonstrated his famous leap even as he could do it, even as an old man. So now Diaghilev has a problem. He has just invested in the most prestigious and expensive ballet so far of the Ballets Russes the title was the Legend of Joseph. He had commissioned the world’s most prestigious and famous composer. That’s Richard Charles. The scenario was created by Given Hoffman Star. The sets were entrusted to the Spanish artist, Josep Maria Sert who’s at the time the husband of Miscia. So what he lacked, well, he suddenly, of course there were three job vacancies, the lover, very important for Tiago F, Stide answer and choreographer, well he had to swallow his pride and bring back Mikhail Fokin to be the choreographer for this ballet.
But he went back to Russia to scout for dancing talent. And he went to Moscow one night he went to the theatre and he noticed in a small role, a very beautiful young man who was called Léonide Massine. Maim was never a dancer of the calibre of Nijinsky. He never had that kind of fame as a dancer. I think initially it must have just been his physical beauty. In fact, he was considering at this time, giving up. He cashing in on his good looks and moving to the straight theatre and giving up dance. But he got a message from Diaghilev who made him a job offer. But Massine, he knew the story, he knew what was involved. He knew that there was going to be the casting couch. And he knew that if he accepted the role, he was going to have to sleep with Diaghilev. So in his autobiography, Diaghilev was staying in the Hotel metropolitan in Russia. You see a picture of it here. And so Massine went, here is Massine. You see how beautiful he was. He’s amazing bedroom eyes. And he went to the hotel metropolitan and he decided to tell Diaghilev no, I’m going to turn down your job opera offer. He said, I knocked on the door of Diaghilev’s room, Diaghilev opened the door. And I heard myself say, yes, I accept your offer. It was, I think Diaghilev was just a very, very compelling person. He was probably somebody you just didn’t say no to. More pictures of the beautiful Massine by Picasso on the left hand side and by Matisse on the right hand side. And here he is in the posing for Joseph in the Legend of Joseph. And it was nil fated ballet. For a whole lot of reasons.
It’s one of the least inspired scores ever written by Richard Strauss. Well, how much I adore Richard Strauss he’s my favourite composer. But even I wouldn’t really be able to defend the score of the Legend of Joseph. And it has more or less disappeared without trace. There are a couple of recordings of it, but it’s never performed. It’s a pretty turd piece. And the whole thing was especially after the “Rite of Spring” the whole thing just seemed a bit passe and stale. And of course, the other problem was it had its premiere in 1914. This was not a great year for a production that was a collaboration of Russians and Germans and Austrian. So it was a costly failure. More pictures of a certain, Massine he certainly made an impression and he had a personal success. These are costumes designed by Bakst for the legend of Joseph. So they were gorgeous, but I suppose they were just more of the same. So, in fact, of course, Massine’s genius was really not so much as a dancer, but he became one of the really important choreographers of the 20th century. And once again, you think, what was it that enabled Diaghilev to see somebody dancing a small role on stage and to think there’s something special about this young man that he’s got some talent that I can reveal.
Now with the outbreak of war in 1914, Diaghilev’s source of new dancers was cut off. So I suppose Massine was the last time he could go and audition a Russian dancer in Russia. These are dancers, have relatively short creative lives. And he had to look around. And actually for the rest of the Belarus, many of his star dancers came from the British Isles. So here are three. On the left is Lydia Sokolova. Her real name was Hilda Munnings, not very alluring for a great Russian ballerina. So Diaghilev said, oh no, you’ve got to ratify it. So her first appearances were under the name of Hilda Munnings of a not very convincing. And it became Sokolova in the middle, one of the big stars of the late Diaghilev period, a man who was called Patrick Healy K, again, not suitable for a dancer with a Ballet Russes. So he became Anton Dolan. He also briefly became Diaghilev’s lover. And on the right is Alice Marks. She was a nice Jewish girl from North London and she became Alicia Markova. And two more here. This is Vera Savina on the left, a very beautiful woman. Her real name was Vera Clark. But she ended her career rather abruptly by running off with none other than Diaghilev’s lover Leonard Massine. But I’ll come back to that in a minute. And on the right hand side is an Irish girl called Edris Stannus. And her name was transformed Diaghilev baptised her, if that’s the right word, Ninette de Valois and she of course, also became a very important, she had her own ballet company and she was very important in setting up the Royal Ballet in London.
So we’re into the first world war the world has changed. And perhaps the most radical ballet of the war period was Parade, oh, that’s another thing. This change that happens just about the time of the First World War, is that the Russian ballet, well it’s not only the dancers, but the artists and the composers become much more international, much less Russian. So already before the War Diaghilev commission works from Dubisi and from Ravelle and then Erik Satie Parade, this was a ballet that was devised by Jean Cocteau. And you see Picasso’s drawing of Jean Cocteau on the right hand side. And it concerns in circuses and borderville. In the 19th, early 20th century, performers would go out onto the street and they would do little samples of what they did on stage in order to attract audiences. So that’s what’s happening in this ballet. This is the curtain, huge curtain by Picasso. Very important work actually in Picasso’s evolution, moving back, as we shall see, in a way, a more traditional form of figuration after his cubist phase. And there you can see Picasso working with assistance. It was largely painted actually by a Russian artist called Boris Anisfeld from Picasso’s Designs.
Another very significant, eventually not altogether happy consequence of the Picasso being picked up by Diaghilev was that he fell in love with one of Diaghilev’s dancers. She was called Olga Khokhlova. She was a very beautiful woman as you can see. And she came from rather a grand Russian family. Her father was a general, so she wasn’t going to have casual sex with Picasso. So she made it very clear she wasn’t going to let him have his evil way with her until she got the ring on the finger. And he was not a man who was used to women resisting him. And I think this sort of intrigues him. And so he proposed to her and they married here are two very beautiful drawings, I think made of, during their courtship before they were married. Was the marriage turned? Absolutely. I mean it was second probably to Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in its sheer nastiness and the way that they tormented one another. And so this lovely girl, this is how she, by the time the marriage ended, this was how Picasso was seeing his wife Olga, obviously in a rather less flattering light. So because of wartime conditions, the Belarus went down to Italy and it was in Italy all the designs and the rehearsals and the preparations were made for Parade So we have photograph here of Picasso and the very elegant looking Massine in the ruins of Pompe.
They became great buddies for rather nefarious reasons. They were both cheating on their other halves. I mean, Picasso wasn’t going to wait for the marriage to, he wasn’t going to be celibate until the marriage. And Massine, as we shall see, like Nijinsky for him, was not really gay. He was predominantly straight. And he liked having sex with women. So Picasso and Massine, they provided an alibi for one another that so to keep Diaghilev happy and to keep Olga happy, they would go out together in the evening. But of course they were frequenting brothels and picking up girls. Designs by Picasso, fabulous designs. And this is the beginning of Picasso’s lifelong fascination with theatre and with dance. So these are Picasso designs for, this is the Chinese acrobat on the right hand side. This is a photograph of how it looks in reality, that costume and these absolutely extraordinary cubist designs. How you danced in one of those, God only knows I think you’re just about totter around the stage in one of those costumes. And this is what the sets look like.
So it’s actually, there’s still a very cubist element sort of disrupted space. But there’s also, as you can see, quite a figurative element. And the score is, I suppose today the most famous orchestral score by Satie and was very provocative, partly 'cause it written in a kind of jaunty, populist almost music all manner, you can say it’s a sort of anti vagner score, anti-German music, all that seriousness of German music. it’s deliberately outrageously flippant music. And he introduces all sorts of strange instruments. I mean a typewriter and a shotgun and a siren are all integrated into the score. So here is an excerpt of the score by Satie.
♪ Music Plays ♪
So it was again an example of Diaghilev, I think really having his finger on the pulse. 'Cause it’s, in a way you can see that, that ballet with its cynicism, it’s flippancy it is a kind of reaction against the horror of the first World War. And it has a sort of Dada-esque proto surrealist quality to it. So here you can see the dancers in their sherzadi costumes, but actually in the Al Alhambra in Spain, so quite Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes spent a large part of the first World War in Spain, which was a non-competent country. And they were loved, they were very well received, particularly in Barcelona, but they couldn’t really earn a good living in Spain. And repeating the same things and travelling around Spain, it became very gruelling. They were really, Diaghilev was running a whole thing on an absolute shoestring. And his clothes wore out and everybody was really living from hand to mouth.
Here again, this is the Alambra again. And once again, the elegant Massine this time with the greatest Spanish composer of the period, Manuel de Falla and Diaghilev commissioned him to write score for the ballet, the three cornered hat. And it was a wonderful marriage of fire’s, music and Picasso’s design. So two great Spanish artists working together. And these, again, costume designed by Picasso. The image you see on the right, actually it’s hanging on the wall to the side of me. It’s a cover of a magazine with, it’s actually an original Picasso print 'cause it’s a lithograph that was used as a cover for the magazine, which I picked up in the flea market, I think for 10 euros, five euros, I can’t remember. Anyway, pretty amazing to be able to get a lovely original Picasso print for that kind of money. And here is a taste of Manuel de Falla’s music.
♪ Music Plays ♪
Now you can’t get much more Spanish than that really. Now I should have mentioned that the choreography for both Pahad and the troupe three quartered hat is Massine. So Massine, he’s now fulfilling all three roles as Diaghilev have always wanted. He’s the lover, he’s the chief choreographer and he’s the star dancer. And he had those roles from 1915 up till 1921. And so the three corner hat was one of the first ballets presented after the First World War. And another was the second version of The Nightingale, which was a score that Stravinsky had written actually before the Rite of Spring. And it was initially presented as an opera and then repackaged as a ballet. And we can see from now on Diaghilev, he’s constantly looking around for avant garde talent of all kinds. And this time he commissioned Henri Matisse Picasso’s great rival, frenemy to make these very stunning designs. I think for the (indistinct).
Another ballet that came out immediately after the first World War was at the Boutique Fantasque. And this time Diaghilev did something which he was going to repeat and would be imitated by many, many other ballet companies. He took fragments of music from a long dead composer and he commissioned a new young composer to orchestrate them and make them into a ballet. There’ve been quite a few ballets like that in the 20th century. This is La Boutique Fantasque. And Diaghilev himself went through manuscripts of piano pieces by Rossini, Rossini who died back in the 1860s. And he made the selection and he handed over these excerpts to the Italian composer Respighi, who’d actually been a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia, and had learned the art of orchestration from him. So it’s a very attractive, delightful score 'cause it’s become an absolute staple of the concert hall. Initially he commissioned Bakst for the designs. The story is set in a doll shop, and there two families come in to pick dolls for their daughters. It’s a Russian family and an American family. And the dolls are brought up and they will do their little demonstration dances. And each family chooses a doll and they’re going to come back and collect it the next day. But the two dolls that they choose are in love with one another and they don’t want to be separated. So at the end of the valley, they make a break for it and they escape into the night.
♪ Music Plays ♪
So here are the Bakst designers, I think they’re absolutely delicious and delightful. But Diaghilev was very, very ruthless when somebody had sort of served their usefulness. He had no compulsion at all about getting rid of them. So having commissioned these designs from Bakst, he obviously thought, no, they’re too pretty. I want something tougher and newer, more modern. So he actually didn’t use Bakst designs and he recommissioned the artist André Durand, to make the designs which were used in the event. So here are two of Durand designs and an excerpt from the score by Resini Respighi. This is bit at the end where they escape into the night. One of Diaghilev’s greatest 'cause was to bring together the two kings of modernism. They were the kings of Paris modern culture, Picasso and Stravinsky. This is the only occasion, in fact, when they worked together. And this was for the Ballet Pulcinella and the score was put together actually on the same principle as La Boutique Fantasque in that Stravinsky was commissioned to orchestrate and rewrite fragments of music by an 18th century composer, Neapolitan composer called Pergolesi.
So the audiences, this was presented in Paris in 1920 with incredible expectation. What outrage, what would come, what outrageous, innovative, shocking result would come from bringing together the authors of the Rite of Spring and the two most radical works of art of the early 20th century. And the audiences were indeed shocked and some people were outraged, but not in the way they expected because it looked like both Picasso and Stravinsky had actually turned their backs on modernism. Picasso produced very beautiful illusionistic designs. That’s a Picasso drawing of Stravinsky on the right hand side. And Stravinsky creative score that could hardly be more different from the violence and dissonance of the “Rite of Spring.”
♪ Music Plays ♪
Oh, here is Picasso with the lovely Olga at the time of their wedding. And this is an almost very classical portrait that he made of her on the right hand side, and you might say a rather traditional and classical drawing of dancers, also big by Picasso. Now, once again, Diaghilev had proved to be a catalyst in both the careers or Picasso and Stravinsky. This collaboration on Pulcinella marked the beginning of the neoclassical phase of both artists. Now for Stravinsky, that’s basically the style that he worked in up until about 1950. So it is the largest chunk of his career. He was working in this slightly spiky neoclassical style, Picasso, you can see from this canvas with images in different styles. Neoclassicism for Picasso for now on just becomes an option. It becomes an alternative. It’s not the style that he works in all the time. Here are dancers in Picasso’s costumes from Pulcinella. Now, in the early 1920s, Picasso made 1921 to be precise, Diaghilev made a very serious miscalculation. He put on a production in London of Jacovski’s Sleeping Beauty, which he called the sleeping princess. And he commissioned an extraordinarily lavish production once again with Bakst, Bakst in favour.
But it was a miscalculation, really. It certainly was wonderful to look at. The costumes survived. Most of 'em are in the Victorian Albert Museum. You could see how absolutely over the top lavish the sets and the costumes were. And these wonderful drawings by Bakst. These are detailed, these are working drawings with instructions. And the costumes were made out of the most fabulous materials. And they were exquisitely crafted. They cost an unbelievable fortune. So the miscalculation was that even though it was a success and the London public absolutely loved it, and it had a sellout run, but even with a sellout run the production was just so expensive that it couldn’t possibly pay for itself. And it completely ruined the finances of the Ballet Russes. And it brought Diaghilev very, very with hairs breath of bankruptcy and ending the company. These all it’s wonderful. At the same time, incidentally Bakst of course was being patronised by the Rothschild. And if you’ve been to Woodson, I’m sure many you’ve been to Woodson, he was working on a series of murals, also on the theme of the Sleeping Princess of Sleeping Beauty with portraits of various members of the Rothschild family as the different characters in the murals these are from the Bakst murals at Woodson.
1921 disaster strikes and history repeats itself because Massine, he’s really habit and he absconds with a woman and he marries her this is Vera Savina. So of course he’s sacked on the spot. And in desperation, Diaghilev actually turns to a woman to be his next chief choreographer. And this is Najinski’s sister Bronislava Najinska. And she then becomes, of course, it was always, I suppose a somewhat uneasy relationship. And Diaghilev was always going to dump her when a promising male choreographer came along. But nevertheless, she worked for him for five years, from 1921 to, what was it, four years to 1925. And like almost everybody else, she does, I mean she had a long career, but her great masterpieces are the ones that she did for Diaghilev and perhaps the most remarkable of all was the Ballet Lenos weddings. And this had a score by Stravinsky, which is probably his best musical score of the 1920s. And it had designs by Larionov, Michel Larionov. And this is a ballet that has really lasted, it’s still done highly original, quite extraordinary choreography as you can see even in these drawings from Bronislava Najinska. And here is an excerpt of, there’s a very spiky, angular score produced by Stravinsky.
♪ Music Plays ♪
So Diaghilev would certainly have gone, he would’ve gone bankrupt if it had not been for a timely and generous offer from the Princely House of Monaco to go and base his company permanently in Monte Carlo. So from 1924 up until his death in 1929, this was the only time really when the company had some kind of stability and some kind of financial security. And the masterpieces just poured out the company. In this period, this is a design for the Ballet Lebish, this had choreography again by Bronislava Najinska that the costumes and sets were by Marie la Rosa the sort of as a kind of a cubist. She’s a called Paris artist. And the score by a very young composer still in his mid twenties. This is Francis Poulenc who you see top right. And it’s a ballet, which is really, once again, it’s breathes the spirit of its time. We’re in the middle of the twenties, this is what the French call crazy years trying to forget the first World War indulging in wild hedonism and all kinds of sexual hi jinks. So there isn’t really a plot to it. It’s about a group spending a weekend in the country house. And it’s about flirtations, people flirting with one another, either homosexual, bisexual, lesbian, flirtations between members of the group.
This is what it looked like. And oh, this I’m showing off here I like to show off. This is 'cause I have a collection of musical autographs and I have this lovely autograph of Francis Poulenc with a quotation, a musical quotation from this ballet. is a slang word actually for people of ambiguous sexuality. And this is Poulenc’s delicious, frivolous melodious score. So here are the dancers relaxing. That’s what’s a wonderful laughter constantly being shuffling around cheap hotels. They could live in comfort in Monte Carlo and they could enjoy the beach life. And this is Anton Dolan, Patrick Healy K, who joined the company in the mid twenties and was for a while, Diaghilev lover. But he was never, he couldn’t fulfil, I mean, he was a star dancer and he was lover, but he wasn’t a choreographer. And eventually he was passed over for . But he’s obviously having a very good time in Monte Carlo. And he was a very handsome man and he was very outgoing and he was a big show off. And he liked performing. He was very athletic. He liked performing just gymnastics on the beach. And this caught the idea of Jean Cocteau. And so he devised a ballet, very novel really.
I said, of course, Diaghilev was the first man to stage a modern costume ballet that had been in tennis costumes before the first World war. But this ballet was staged in beach wear with very fashionable, trendy bathing costumes designed by Coco Chanel. So here is, there is Cocteau and Anton Dolan to his left. And so the score was commissioned from Darius New. So here is Coco Chanel, and here this is the latest trendy beware of 1925. And the other very famous thing about this production is the curtain by Picasso. In fact Picasso didn’t make this design specifically as a curtain for the ballet. He’d made a small watercolour of these two dancing figures on the beach. And Diaghilev saw it and he thought, oh, that’d be great. And he got permission from Picasso to have it enlarged for the curtain, for the ballet. And this is what the ballet looked like, lots of very athletic leaping around. So 1925 Diaghilev makes one of his last great astonishing discoveries. And that is a young dancer called George Balanchine. He’s still in his mid twenties or early twenties. And he, of course, again, turned out to be one of the most, the greatest and most influential choreographers of the 20th century. Had a disadvantage. The disadvantage was that he was completely straight and really adored women. So he wasn’t going to fulfil all three functions for Diaghilev.
But on the right hand side, you can see a young man who then takes over as Diaghilev’s lover, a Russian dancer called Serge Lifar in a ballet called , which had music by Stravinsky and choreography by Balanchine. So in these years, people have sometimes criticised Diaghilev in the later years as constantly neurotically being in search of novelty that every single ballet that came out had to be in a different style, a different avant-garde style. And people have also said, well, early on the Ballet Russes created fashion. Whereas you could say in the last years it followed fashion rather than creating fashion, whatever, I would love to have been there and seen the premiers of all these ballets. This is a Ballet Schout, S-C-H-O-U-T, which had a score by Prokofiev and these now who did the designs? Yes, it’s Larionov. Larrionov. Again these rather expressionist primitive designs in these are Larionov costumes for shoot, he experiments, Diaghilev experiments with Serialism. So this is the Ballet Lubal with a score by the Italian composer, Rieti, but mainly memorable for these surrealist stage designs and costumes by Giorgio de Chirico fabulous costumes, as you can see. And this is a constructivist ballet by the brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner although they have different names.
They were brothers of Russian Jewish origin of course, and constructivism using very often materials and techniques of industry and the construction business. And he even, although this must have really gone against the grain for Diaghilev put on one ballet, which was, this is which had a score by Prokofiev and the designs by the Soviet artist Yakolov. And this is an experiment in Soviet socialist realism, which was certainly not close to the heart of the aristocratic Diaghilev. So this is the last great love of Diaghilev’s life. I don’t think it was a love that was consummated. This young, he was a very young boy. He was 16 years old. And it’s another case of Diaghilev certainly realising that somebody has a great talent and he was at this time an aspiring composer, but Igor Markovich. But he went on to become one of the most distinguished conductors of the 20th century. And bizarrely he was, I’m not sure if he was heterosexual or bisexual, but in any case, he married a daughter of Nijinsky and Romola Nijinsky, which all feels slightly incestuous. So yes, Diaghilev does die, not exactly on water. He died in a hotel at the Lido in Venice. Maybe he should have kept a bit further away from the water. And that clairvoyant that who saw a vision of Diaghilev’s death on water he maybe the vision he saw was not the death itself, but his funeral, which took place in Venice. And the funeral definitely did take place on water. This is Diego’s death mask.
Well, with Diaghilev gone, the company just disintegrated instantly without this guiding spirit, without this forceful, forceful character. But from the wreckage, from the ruins, ballet companies all around the world, London, of course New York Ballet, , the Paris Ballet . So the influence of Diaghilev was incredibly pervasive and very, very important for the rest of the 20th century as far as modern dance is concerned.
So I’m now going to go into questions and answers.
Q&A and Comments
“The Red Shoes”. Yes, of course you should all see “The Red Shoes”. He’s marvellous in well it’s a great film in itself and he’s wonderful in it. This is Valerie. As a child I was taped of garden by a friend of Massine common Garden by a friend of Massine in interval he came up to our seat and I was introduced to him. This sparked my lifelong interest in ballet. How wonderful to have met Massine. That is something you would never forget. Oh, thank you Jennifer. This is Sandy saying he saw Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova as well she wouldn’t, yes. She would’ve been rather elderly 10 year old girl, I suppose by that point. Oh, you were a 10 year old girl when you saw Don and Markova and it was a prize for getting a scholarship to a rather good school. Well done.
Q: Dolan was he chubby? A: Yes. I dunno, I met him once it was actually, it’s a performance of Rosen Cavalier and he was in the foyer and he came up to me actually, and it, 'cause somebody had asked for his autograph and he asked me if I had a pen and I gave him a pen and rather stupidly, I didn’t ask him to give me an autograph, a nasty balance, bunch of talent.
Mm, I dunno, I dunno. Yeah, there are certainly aspects of Diaghilev that were nasty, but it was, I’m very glad he was there and I certainly wouldn’t want to cancel him or ban him in any way or anything that he did. And Alice, who actually saw my scene, the three cornered hat, a wonderful, baron at the ballet. Yes, there’s a photography, well, as I said, there was, I think it was called, was it Baron Meyer? Who did all those photographs of Nijinsky that I showed you last time, British dancer who joined the Ballet Russes, later in Argentina was David Grey.
Let me see, I just somebody DVDs and Jinsky ballets. Yeah, of course. It is. One of the fascinating things was the reconstruction of the choreography for the “Rite of Spring,” which was long thought to be lost, but there was a woman called Valentine Gross or Valentine Hugo, and she had attended all the rehearsals and she made such detailed drawings all the way through of what went in on that ballet that it was possible to reconstruct the choreography from that Romi Slava. Yes. All right. Yes, this Barbara saying her husband made two kind arrangement of the from Lebish. What was the name of the ballet was Lutablo. Sorry, I should have told you that Lutablo, which is the train that goes from the De Leon down to the . Thank you, Patricia. Oh, it’s somebody, this is Carolyn who also saw Dolan and Markovo across the great pair for many, many years.
Q: Did Pavlova feature in the company? A: Yes, as I said last week, but only in the first two seasons, and then she set up our own company. When I do a talk on the Russian impression is now I don’t think I will.
Q: How true is the depiction of Diaghilev? A: I think it’s probably, I don’t think it was meant to be a true picture. I mean it’s got elements of Diaghilev. It’s a bit of a caricature.
Thank you very much. Slava did she teach in Los Angeles in the 1940s, but I know she went to America. Thank you for your kind comments. Did new classicism or modernism arise at the same point in time? No, these, well, I’ll do a whole lecture on that if you like at some point. There’s neoclassicism is a movement of the late 18th century. Actually, what I was talking about today is could really be called Neo Neoclassicism. It’s a classical revival between the wars or it’s what Jean Cocteau he called it call to order. And it was quite a pervasive thing and it takes various forms, including of course the kind of classicism that was adopted by the totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler.
This is Richard Friedman, my grandmother danced Irene Stewart in the Ballet Russes Core Ballet in 1912. You have her autograph. That’s a lovely thing to have. Yeah. Yeah, the sense of excitement. That’s the really, and I agree about Matthew Barn’s Ballet. I think that’s absolutely wonderful. I thought his version of, what was it, Swan Lake. Ah, God, that’s wonderful. That’s a DVD to get a hold of. And it’s one of those things like the films of Almodóvar, you cry and you laugh and you’re crying and laughing at the same time. I mean it’s very, very funny. Matthew Barnes, “Swan Lake”. But it’s also very moving.
So that I seem to run out of questions or have I oh, no, Carman as great too. Thank you for your kind comments and I think I better stop here. And so when I talk to you for, again, it’ll be from London and I’ll be talking about another incredible giant of the performing arts. Feodor Chaliapin.
[Judi] Thank you Patrick. And thank we’ll see you next week. Yep.
Right. Bye-bye.
[Judi] Take care. Bye-bye everyone.