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Tag: Ballets Russes

Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Celebrates 150 Years

It’s Saturday night! Celebrate by cutting a rug with Sergei Diaghilev. The famed ballet impresario was born on this date 150 years ago.

The company he founded, the Paris-based, world-renowned Ballets Russes, never actually performed in Russia, due to the upheaval of the Russian Revolution. However, from 1909 to 1929, the Ballets Russes performed throughout Europe, and North and South America, collaborating with some of the most-esteemed artists of the time and building a reputation as the most influential ballet company of the 20th century.

Among those commissioned or employed by Diaghilev were composers Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, and Erik Satie, choreographers Marius Petipa, Michel Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, Bronislava Nijinska, Léonide Massine, and George Balanchine, visual artists Vasily Kandinsky, Alexandre Benois, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, and costume designers Léon Bakst and Coco Chanel.

The enterprise flourished until the double-blow of the Great Depression and the death of its founder in 1929. In 1932, the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo rose from the ashes, reconstituted by Colonel Wassily de Basil, a Russian émigré entrepreneur from Paris, and René Blum, ballet director of the Monte Carlo Opera.

Within four years, the organization was rent by creative differences, and a splinter group, led by Blum, emerged. This ultimately promoted itself as the Original Ballet Russe.

During World War II, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo spent significant time touring the Americas. As dancers retired and left the company, they began teaching or founded their own studios – Balanchine started the New York City Ballet – so that Diaghilev’s influence pervaded American dance. Tamara Toumanova, Maria Tallchief, Cyd Charisse, Ann Reinking, and Yvonne Craig were all alumni of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo.

Alumni of the Original Ballet Russe, which toured mostly in Europe, were influential in teaching classical Russian ballet technique there.

For the sesquicentennial of Sergei Diaghilev, get your toes tapping with 12 works written or adapted for the Ballets Russes!

MAURICE RAVEL, “DAPHNIS ET CHLOE”
Shepherds, pirates, and Pan!

NIKOLAI TCHEREPNIN, “NARCISSE ET ECHO”
Tcherepnin was actually Diaghilev’s first choice to compose “The Firebird.”

IGOR STRAVINSKY, “PULCINELLA”
Diaghilev produced Stravinsky’s three breakthrough ballets, “The Firebird,” “Petrouchka,” and “The Rite of Spring,” but this one is the most unremittingly joyous.

RICHARD STRAUSS, “JOSEPHSLEGENDE”
Poor Richard Strauss never got paid for his opulent biblical ballet on account of WWI.

MANUEL DE FALLA, “THE THREE-CORNERED HAT”
Ballet meets flamenco.

PETER ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY, “AURORA’S WEDDING”
Stokowski conducting, at the age of 95!

LORD BERNERS, “THE TRIUMPH OF NEPTUNE”
Sailor Tom Tug’s adventures in Fairy Land.

CONSTANT LAMBERT, “ROMEO AND JULIET”
Not really an adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, but a backstage romantic comedy. Just a clip, with set and costume designs by Max Ernst and Joan Miro.

OTTORINO RESPIGHI, “LA BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE”
“The Fantastic Toybox,” after melodies of Rossini.

SERGEI PROKOFIEV, “THE PRODIGAL SON”
Bad boys get the best music.

ERIK SATIE, “PARADE”
Selections, choreography by Massine and designs by Picasso.

FRANCIS POULENC, “LES BICHES”
Before you get any smart ideas, the title means “The Does,” slang for coquettish young women.

PHOTO: Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Igor Stravinsky

March 19, 2022
Ballets Russes’ Lost English Composers

Serge Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes, commissioned some of the most enduring ballet scores of the 20th century, from such composers as Claude Debussy (“Jeux”), Maurice Ravel (“Daphnis and Chloe”), Manuel de Falla (“The Three-Cornered Hat”), and Igor Stravinsky (“The Firebird,” “Petrushka” and “The Rite of Spring”).

Less well known is the fact that two Englishmen were also approached.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll listen to works by Constant Lambert and Lord Berners – both men so diverse in their interests, and possessing such outsized personalities, it isn’t really possible to do justice to either in the time allotted.

Lambert was a brilliant polymath. In addition to his considerable talents as a composer, he was a conductor, arranger, and writer, as well as the lover of Margot Fonteyn. Alas, alcoholism and workaholism conspired with undiagnosed diabetes to hasten his demise at the age of 45.

His ballet, “Romeo and Juliet,” presented as a play-within-a-play, turns Shakespeare’s tragedy of star-crossed lovers on its head, with the leads falling hard in a backstage romance with happier results. Lambert would go on to greater things, but the ballet is undeniably an impressive piece of work for a 20 year-old.

Similarly, Lord Berners’ interests lay all over the place, but his was a much more relaxed character. Unfailingly productive as a composer, a painter, and a writer, nonetheless he never lost sight of the fact that life would be his magnum opus. And Berners lived well.

Furthermore, his fortune ensured that he would never be taken to task for any of his whimsical behavior. This included having a 140-foot folly tower constructed on his estate (partly to annoy the neighbors) and keeping a horse and a giraffe to invite to his indoor and outdoor tea parties.

Berners wrote novels, painted portraits (always sure to include a moustache, whether the sitter had one or not), and composed a respectable amount of music, especially for the ballet.

For the Ballets Russes, he wrote “The Triumph of Neptune,” which became a great favorite of Sir Thomas Beecham. Sacheverell Sitwell provided the scenario, which concerns a sailor who is shipwrecked en route to Fairyland, and George Balanchine supplied the choreography.

That’s a heady mix of hornpipes and pas de deux. I hope you’ll join me for “England à la Russe,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Berners, no doubt contemplating the placement of a moustache

May 17, 2020
Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Turns 100

Stravinsky’s commedia dell’arte scamp is 100 years-old.

“Pulcinella” was given its first performance on this date in 1920. The ballet was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and given its premiere, at the Paris Opera, by the Ballets Russes. Leonide Massine provided both the libretto and the choreography. The sets were designed by Pablo Picasso.

For years, it was thought that the raw material for Stravinsky’s score, based on manuscripts of the 18th century, derived from the quill of Giovanni Pergolesi. However, over time, scholarship has revealed that many of the original pieces were actually the work of Pergolesi contemporaries, composers such as Domenico Gallo and Unico Wilhelm von Wassenaer.

The idea of arranging Pergolesi’s music was the idea of conductor Ernest Ansermet, who conducted the ballet’s premiere. Stravinsky was resistant at first, but closer acquaintance with the original scores unlocked their possibilities. Stravinsky’s arrangements honored the spirit of the past, but also imbued it with a modern sensibility, employing a distinctly 20th century syntax. It is one of the composer’s most playful, exuberant scores.

“‘Pulcinella’ was… the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible,” he later wrote. “It was a backward look, of course—the first of many love affairs in that direction—but it was a look in the mirror, too.”

It would be the first of Stravinsky’s innumerable interactions with historical music and forms and the birth of a style that would soon be identified as “neoclassical.”

The popular suite, shorn of the complete ballet vocal music, was giving its first performance in Boston, two years later, with Pierre Monteux conducting.

“Pergolesi” themes also inform the spin-off chamber works “Suite d’après des thèmes, fragments et morceaux de Giambattista Pergolesi,” for violin and piano (1925), and the “Suite Italienne,” for cello or violin and piano (1932-33). Any way you slice it, the music is a delight.

“Pulcinella” (complete):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD6dRSKLjlU&t=0m7s

The suite, part of a complete concert performed (without conductor) by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ZpCA4pRtM&t=8m24s

Cellist Heinrich Schiff and the “Suite Italienne”:

May 15, 2020
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes 12 Tapping Tunes

Today is the birthday of ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Get your toes tapping with 12 works written or adapted for the Ballets Russes. You know you need the exercise.

MAURICE RAVEL, “DAPHNIS ET CHLOE”
Shepherds, pirates, and Pan!

NIKOLAI TCHEREPNIN, “NARCISSE ET ECHO”
Tcherepnin was actually Diaghilev’s first choice to compose “The Firebird.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5DwOXhO7YM

IGOR STRAVINSKY, “PULCINELLA”
Diaghilev produced Stravinsky’s three breakthrough ballets, “The Firebird,” “Petrouchka,” and “The Rite of Spring,” but this one is the most unremittingly joyous.

RICHARD STRAUSS, “JOSEPHSLEGENDE”
Poor Richard Strauss never got paid for his opulent biblical ballet on account of WWI.

MANUEL DE FALLA, “THE THREE-CORNERED HAT”
Ballet meets flamenco.

PETER ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY, “AURORA’S WEDDING”
Stokowski conducting, at the age of 95!

LORD BERNERS, “THE TRIUMPH OF NEPTUNE”
Sailor Tom Tug’s adventures in Fairy Land (alas, these excerpts comprise but a third of the ballet).

CONSTANT LAMBERT, “ROMEO AND JULIET”
Not really an adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, but a backstage romantic comedy. Just a clip, with set and costume designs by Max Ernst and Joan Miro.

OTTORINO RESPIGHI, “LA BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE”
“The Fantastic Toybox,” after melodies of Rossini.

SERGEI PROKOFIEV, “THE PRODIGAL SON”
Bad boys get the best music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNC-Bz19Mcs

ERIK SATIE, “PARADE”
Selections, choreography by Massine and designs by Picasso.

FRANCIS POULENC, “LES BICHES”
Before you get any smart ideas, the title means “The Does,” slang for coquettish young women. With Nijinska’s choreography. (BONUSES: Diaghilev’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” and “Scheherazade”).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5_iYhXAFa4

PHOTO: Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Igor Stravinsky

March 31, 2020
Ballets Russes Treasures on The Classical Network

Serge Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes, commissioned some of the most enduring ballet scores of the 20th century, from such composers as Claude Debussy (“Jeux”), Maurice Ravel (“Daphnis and Chloe”), Manuel de Falla (“The Three-Cornered Hat”), and especially Igor Stravinsky (“The Firebird,” “Petrushka” and “The Rite of Spring”).

This afternoon on The Classical Network, we’ll have a chance to enjoy some of the lesser-known fruits of this partnership, including “Narcisse et Echo” by Nikolai Tcherepnin – written one year before “Daphnis,” though with some striking similarities – and the complete ballet “The Triumph of Neptune” – one of only two works composed for the company by an English composer, in this case Lord Berners. The suite, not exactly overplayed, was a great favorite of Sir Thomas Beecham (he recorded it several times), but the complete ballet is never done. We’ll also hear Richard Strauss’ music for the bombastic biblical spectacle “Josephslegende” (“The Legend of Joseph”) in its entirety.

First, on today’s Noontime Concert, it’s music for voice and viol, courtesy of Gotham Early Music Scene, or GEMS. Mezzo-soprano Ashley Mulcahy and viola da gambist James Perretta of the duo Lyracle will present works for this distinctive combination from the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

These performances were captured at GEMS’ Midtown Concerts series, held at the chapel of St. Bartholomew’s Church, 325 Park Avenue, in New York City. Free concerts take place at St. Bart’s on Thursdays at 1:15 p.m. For more information, visit GEMS’ website, gemsny.org, and click on the events calendar.

Join me for a mix of GEMS and flawed diamonds from the Ballets Russes, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

IMAGE: Potiphar’s wife got it goin’ on!

June 4, 2019

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