Sergei Diaghilev

(click to enlarge)
Serge Diaghilev, 1916. (credit: Dance Collection, the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

(born March 31, 1872, Novgorod province, Russia — died Aug. 19, 1929, Venice, Italy) Russian impresario, founder-director of the Ballets Russes. After studying law at the University of St. Petersburg (1890 – 96), he cofounded and edited (1899 – 1904) the avant-garde magazine Mir Iskusstva ("World of Art"). He then left Russia for Paris to present productions of Russian ballet and opera, to wide acclaim. In 1909 he established the Ballets Russes, in which he achieved a stunning synthesis of dance, art, and music by bringing together superb choreographers, dancers, composers, and artists and set designers. He led the company until his death.

For more information on Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev, visit Britannica.com.

A Russian who inspired artists, musicians, and dancers, Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) took the ballet to new heights of public enjoyment.

And what, dear sir, do you do in the company?" asked King Alfonso of Spain upon meeting Sergei Diaghilev, famed impresario of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. "You don't conduct the orchestra or play an instrument. You don't design the mise en scene, and you don't dance. What do you do?" Ever charming and self-assured, Diaghilev replied, "Your Majesty, I am like you. I do no work. I do nothing, but I am indispensible."

Diaghilev's response was more than modest. He devoted his lifetime to promoting the arts - to a reverence for quality in the old and the new in music, painting, and the dance, and, eventually, to a merging of the three arts in the theatre form known as ballet.

Diaghilev was born in 1872 into an aristocratic, wealthy family on a country estate in Perm, a province of Russia. Serious conversations about poetry and literature, chamber music, and informal opera soirees were normal family activities. His studies from an early age included music and music theory. At home and at school his role as 'Young Master' was accepted as appropriate. There were those then, and later, who thought he was arrogant, but it was generally recognized that he possessed superior qualities.

His mother died at childbirth, but he was cared for and disciplined by a beloved step-mother. Throughout his life he remembered her admonition that he must never say "I cannot." Her message was, "When one wants to, one always can." He found the paths that let him do what he wanted to do and he was pleased when viewers were thrilled by his unconventional perceptions.

Diaghilev's life divides into three time units. The first and second, 18 years each, were secure preparations for the 21 years of high drama of the third.

Career Change in Second Phase

In Perm he was effectively nurtured until he was sent off to be with distinguished relatives while studying law in St. Petersburg. In that city (Peter the Great's "window to the west") the country boy was citified. He learned much, including an awareness of the richness of Russian early painting and architecture.

Diaghilev soon discovered that he had little interest in the law, certainly far less than his love for music which remained throughout his life. Through his cousin he now became a member of a circle of writers, musicians, and painters that included Alexandre Benois and Leon Baskt. These two remained important colleagues for many years. It was already clear that Diaghilev's taste in art as well as music was exquisite, and that he had a flair for discovering talent, and a talent for discerning its possibilities. He began to write essays about artists and art trends, and soon found himself, along with Benois and Baskt, opposed to existing art criticism. Neither the conservative academics nor the realism of the political left was acceptable to the three friends, and they were vehement in their objections. Non-political, they spoke for the new voice of art as the expression of the individual. From their fervor there came to life a new magazine titled Mir Isskustva (World of Art), which for five turbulent years shocked the art world.

One result was that outspoken Diaghilev was invited to join the Maryinsky Theatre, jewel of the Russian imperial theatres, to be in charge of "special missions." His first assignment was to edit the year book of the imperial theatres. He did it well and was then assigned the supervision of an opera, and after that a ballet. But his impatience and arrogance in dealing with the bureaucracy resulted in trouble, and in 1911 he left. It was at the Maryinsky that he became acquainted with Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Michel Fokine, and other members of the Imperial Ballet and further developed an interest in the ballet.

Pursuing his interest in Russian art he travelled extensively through the country to collect and make possible exhibits of arts of the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1905 he was responsible for a major St. Petersburg exhibit titled Russian Historical Portraits. He took the exhibit to Paris in 1907, the first export of Russian art. From that beginning in Paris there developed the opera and ballet career that was to make the name of Diaghilev a shining light in the Western world.

Fame in His Third Phase

In 1908 Paris was receptive to new ideas. There Diaghilev presented Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunoff, with Maryinsky basso Feodor Chaliapin in the title role. The impact was ecstatic and resulted in an invitation to bring a troupe of Russian dancers to Paris. The result made history.

On October 19, 1909, the Ballets Russes presented five ballets, four of them choreographed by Fokine, who had already broken with the classical style and dared to invent dance movement appropriate to the ballet's subject. The ladies were not forever dainty, and the male dancers revealed an unprecedented energy and virtuosity. Nijinsky, Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Adolph Bolm, Mikhail Mordkin, and Ida Rubenstein were among the dancers. Fokine later wrote about opening night: " … the audience rushed and actually tore off the orchestra rail in the Chatelet Theatre. The success was absolutely unbelievable." Karsavina, in her book of recollections, Theatre Street, wrote "The atmosphere enveloping the Russian season had a subtle, light, gay intoxication. Something akin to a miracle happened every night - the stage and audience trembled in a unison of emotion."

In 1910 the ballet company returned to Paris, again on leave from the Maryinsky. But in 1911 Diaghilev decided he would set up a full-time, permanent company. With Baskt and Benois again as colleagues, he established the first privately supported company of people willing to give up pension, honors, and benefits to join Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The company was already famous. It was soon to be augmented by other brilliant talents, men and women from countries other than Russia, attracted to collaborate in daring new ventures.

In the years between 1911 and Diaghilev's death in 1929 the company toured over and over again throughout Europe, South America, the United States. In England it inspired the beginnings of The Royal Ballet. In Boston a young Lincoln Kirstein, determined to be like Diaghilev, brought George Balanchine across the Atlantic to establish the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet. New Englander Lucia Chase, a ballet student of Mordkin (who had been Pavlova's concert partner as well a member of Ballets Russes), was encouraged by him to start Ballet Theatre. And many of today's ballet teachers in the United States trace their pedagogical heritage to the Russians who stayed behind to open up dance studios.

The long list of collaborators in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes included designers Bakst, Benois, and famous names from the world of art - Braque, Chagall, Cocteau, de Cherico, Derain, Laurencin, Matisse, Picasso (who designed posters, sets, and costumes and also married a company ballerina), Roerich and Utrillo. Among those who composed music for ballets were Debussy, de Falla, Milhaud, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Ravel, Satie, and Stravinsky.

In addition to Pavlova and Nijinsky, some of the company's famed dancers were Bolm, Dubrovska, Danilova, Dolin, Karsavina, Lifar, Lopokova, Markova, Mordkin, Sokolova, Spessivtzeva, Vilzak, Vladimirof, and Woizikovsky. While many of the dancers were not Russian-born, all of the choreographers were. Choreographers, and some of their ballets, were Fokine: Les Sylphides, Spectre de la Rose, Petrouchka, Firebird, and Scheherazade; Nijinsky: Afternoon of a Faun, Jeux, and Sacre du Printemps; Massine: Parade, Boutique Fantasique, and Le Tricorne; Nijinska: Les Noces and Les Biches; Balanchine: Apollo and Prodigal Son. While this is an incomplete list, it represents some of the Diaghilev ballets performed in company repertoires today, a remarkable reminder of Diaghilev "classics."

Diaghilev died of diabetes in his beloved Venice on August 19, 1929. He was the catalyst who helped open the door for the arts of the 20th century.

Further Reading

Richard Buckle's Diaghilev is the most detailed of numerous biographies. In it are six pages, single spaced, of sources - books, articles, and documents relating to the life and work of the Russian impressario who created the Diaghilev Era. Of special interest is the first biography, Diaghileff, His Artistic and Private Life, by Arnold Haskell (1935; paperback, 1978); and Buckle's In Search of Diaghilev (London, 1958, New York, 1975).

Additional Sources

Buckle, Richard, Diaghilev, New York: Atheneum, 1984, 1979.

Buckle, Richard, In the wake of Diaghilev, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1983, 1982.

Garafola, Lynn, Diaghilev's Ballets russes, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Diaghileff, his artistic and private life, New York: Da Capo Press, 1978, c1935.

Diaghilev, Sergei (b Novgorod, 31 Mar. 1872, d Venice, 19 Aug. 1929). Russian impresario, who played a major role in re-creating ballet for the 20th century. He studied law (and, briefly, musical composition) in St Petersburg where he also joined the circle of artists surrounding Benois and Bakst. With this group he was co-founder of the art review Mir iskusstva (The World of Art) in 1899 which ran till 1904. Between 1899 and 1901 he was also Assistant to the Director of Imperial Theatres where he oversaw the publication of the theatre annual, though disagreements over his supervision of a production of Sylvia led to his dismissal. In 1905 he mounted an exhibition of historical portraiture at the Tarud Palace and in 1906 took a lavish exhibition of Russian painting to Paris. In 1907 he presented five concerts of Russian music at the Paris Opera and in 1908 returned with a production of Boris Godunov with Chaliapin. This led to an invitation to bring a season of Russian opera and ballet in May and June 1909. With a company that included Russia's finest young dancers, Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky, and Bolm and a repertoire that featured the radical new choreography of Fokine he scored a huge triumph. Repeated visits led to the formation of a full company, Les Ballets Russes, which became permanent when Nijinsky resigned from the Maryinsky Theatre in 1911 and he and Diaghilev left Russia for good. For the next eighteen years the company toured widely in Europe and N. and S. America, and though often close to bankruptcy was regarded as one of the most inspired and experimental troupes in the world. Its success was primarily due to Diaghilev's genius for spotting new talent and setting up collaborations between artists. He believed that ballet should be a complete theatrical art and that music, design, and choreography should equally break new ground. His ballets reflected, and were sometimes even catalysts for, new artistic trends. Most of his designers were painters, creating vibrant imagery, patterns, and colours for the stage. The exotic palette of Bakst's designs for the early Fokine ballets influenced not only other stage designers but also fashion and interior decoration. Picasso's Cubist costumes for Parade were typical of the way that Diaghilev's artist-designers (e.g. Matisse, Braque, di Chirico, and Miró) enlivened the possibilities of stage design with their own unique aesthetic. Diaghilev also encouraged leading new composers to write scores for him, many of which revolutionized both the genre of ballet music and also the principles of musical composition, e.g. Stravinsky's Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, Satie's Parade, and Debussy's Jeux. Diaghilev also nurtured the talents of some of the 20th century's greatest choreographers, including Fokine, Nijinsky, Massine, Nijinska, and Balanchine, through he quarrelled with them all and his taste often followed his heart—both Nijinsky and Massine were Diaghilev's lovers and both fell out of favour when they fell in love with women. Finally, throughout its twenty years of existence his company attracted some of the era's greatest dancers, not only émigrés from Russia like Spessivtseva and Danilova but also dancers like the English ballerina Markova who had no national ballet company with which to perform. In 1921 an opulent production of The Sleeping Princess in London nearly brought Diaghilev to financial ruin, but he was saved by securing a permanent base for his company at the Monte Carlo Casino. After his death in 1929 many of the ballets in his repertoire survived in the companies of Blum and de Basil and are still performed today. Many of his commissioned scores, too, have become classics of the 20th-century concert repertoire, while his company's designs are treasured in museum collections. But it was perhaps through his dancers and choreographers, e.g. Balanchine, Fokine, Lifar, Markova, Massine, Danilova, de Valois, and Rambert, many of whom went on to found schools and companies throughout the world, that Diaghilev's influence has been most widespread.

Sergei Diaghilev
Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev by Valentin Serov (1904)
Born	31 March 1872(1872-03-31) Selischi, Novgorod gubernia, Russia
Died	19 August 1929 (aged 57) Venice, Italy
Resting place	San Michele, near Venice
Nationality	Russian
Occupation	Art critic, patron and ballet impresario
Known for	Founder of the Ballets Russes

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (Russian: Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев / Sergei Pavlovich Dyagilev Russian pronunciation: [sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavlovʲɪtɕ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf]), also referred to as Serge, (31 March 1872 – 19 August 1929) was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes from which many famous dancers and choreographers would later arise.

Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Ballets Russes 3 Personal life 4 References 5 See also 6 Further reading

Early life and career

Sergei Diaghilev was born to a wealthy family in Selischi (Novgorod gubernia), Russia toward the end of its age of empire. He finished Perm gymnasium in year 1890. Sent to the capital to study law at St. Petersburg University, he ended up also taking classes at the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music where he studied singing and music (a love of which he had picked up from his stepmother). After graduating in 1892 he abandoned his dreams of composition (his professor, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, told him he had no talent for music). He had already entered an influential circle of artists who called themselves the Pickwickians: Alexandre Benois, Walter Nouvel, Konstantin Somov, Dmitri Filosofov and Léon Bakst. Although not instantly received into the group, Diaghilev was aided by Benois in developing his knowledge of Russian and Western Art. In two years, he had voraciously absorbed this new obsession (even travelling abroad to further his studies) and came to be respected as one of the most learned of the group.

With financial backing from Savva Mamontov (the director of the Russian Private Opera Company^[1]) and Princess Maria Tenisheva, the group founded the journal Mir iskusstva (World of Art)

In 1899, Diaghilev became special assistant to Prince Sergei Mikhailovitch Volkonsky, who had recently taken over directorship of all Imperial theaters. Diaghilev was soon responsible for the production of the Annual of the Imperial Theaters in 1900, and promptly offered assignments to his close friends: Léon Bakst would design costumes for the French play Le Coeur de la Marquise, while Benois was given the opportunity to produce Sergei Taneyev's opera Cupid's Revenge.

Portrait of Serge Diaghilev with His Nanny, by Léon Bakst (1906).

In 1900–1901 Volkonsky entrusted Diaghilev with the staging of Léo Delibes' ballet Sylvia, a favorite of Benois'. The two collaborators concocted an elaborate production plan that startled the established personnel of the Imperial Theatres. After several increasingly antagonistic differences of opinion, Diaghilev in his demonstrative manner refused to go on editing the "Annual of the Imperial Theatres" and was discharged by Volkonsky in 1901^[2] and left disgraced in the eyes of the nobility. At the same time, some of Diaghilev's researchers hinted to his homosexuality as the main cause for this conflict. However, his homosexuality had been well-known long before he was invited in Imperial Theatres and so it could not be the real reason for his discharging, moreover he would not be invited otherwise.

Ballets Russes

Diaghilev's friends stayed true, following him and helping to put on exhibitions, mounted in the name of Mir iskusstva. In 1905 he mounted a huge exhibition of Russian portrait painting in St Petersburg, having travelled widely through Russia for a year discovering many previously unknown masterpieces of Russian portrait art. In the following year he took a major exhibition of Russian art to the Petit Palais in Paris. It was the beginning of a long involvement with France. In 1907 he presented five concerts of Russian music in Paris, and in 1908 mounted a production of Boris Godunov, starring Feodor Chaliapin, at the Paris Opera.

This led to an invitation to return the following year with ballet as well as opera, and thus to the launching of his famous Ballets Russes. The company included the best young Russian dancers, among them Anna Pavlova, Adolph Bolm, Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina and Vera Karalli, and their first night on 19 May 1909 was a sensation.

During these years Diaghilev's stagings included several compositions by the late Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, such as the operas The Maid of Pskov, May Night, and The Golden Cockerel. His balletic adaptation of the orchestral suite Sheherazade, staged in 1910, drew the ire of the composer's widow, Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova, who protested in open letters to Diaghilev published in the periodical Rech. Diaghilev commissioned ballet music from composers such as Nikolai Tcherepnin (Narcisse et Echo, 1911), Claude Debussy (Jeux, 1913), Maurice Ravel (Daphnis et Chloé, 1912), Erik Satie (Parade, 1917), Manuel de Falla (El Sombrero de Tres Picos, 1917), Richard Strauss (Josephslegende, 1914), Sergei Prokofiev (Ala and Lolly, rejected by Diaghilev and turned into the Scythian Suite; Chout, 1915 revised 1920; Le Pas d'acier, 1926; and The Prodigal Son, 1929), Ottorino Respighi (La Boutique fantasque, 1918), Francis Poulenc (Les Biches, 1923) and others. His choreographer Michel Fokine often adapted the music for ballet. Diaghilev also worked with dancer and ballet master Léonide Massine.

The artistic director for the Ballets Russes was Léon Bakst. Together they developed a more complicated form of ballet with show-elements intended to appeal to the general public, rather than solely the aristocracy. The exotic appeal of the Ballets Russes had an effect on Fauvist painters and the nascent Art Deco style.

Perhaps Diaghilev's most notable composer collaborator, however, was Igor Stravinsky. Diaghilev heard Stravinsky's early orchestral works Fireworks and Scherzo fantastique, and was impressed enough to ask Stravinsky to arrange some pieces by Frédéric Chopin for the Ballets Russes. In 1910, he commissioned his first score from Stravinsky, The Firebird. Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) followed shortly afterwards, and the two also worked together on Pulcinella (1920) and Les noces (1923).

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Diaghilev stayed abroad. The new Soviet regime, once it became obvious that he could not be lured back, condemned him in perpetuity as an especially insidious example of bourgeois decadence. Soviet art historians wrote him out of the picture for more than 60 years.^[3]

Diaghilev

Diaghilev staged Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty in London in 1921; it was a production of remarkable magnificence both in settings and costumes, but despite being well received by the public it was a financial disaster for Diaghilev and Oswald Stoll, the theatre-owner, who had backed it. The first cast included the legendary ballerina Olga Spessivtseva. Diaghilev insisted on calling the ballet The Sleeping Princess. When asked why, he quipped, "Because I have no beauties!" The later years of the Ballets Russes were often considered too "intellectual", too "stylish" and seldom had the unconditional success of the first few seasons, although younger choreographers like George Balanchine hit their stride with the Ballet Russes.

The end of the 19th century brought a development in the handling of tonality, harmony, rhythm and meter towards more freedom. Until that time, rigid harmonic schemes had forced rhythmic patterns to stay fairly uncomplicated. Around the turn of the century, however, harmonic and metric devices became either more rigid, or much more unpredictable, and each approach had a liberating effect on rhythm, which also affected ballet. Diaghilev was a pioneer in adapting these new musical styles to modern ballet. When Ravel used a 5/4 time in the final part of his ballet Daphnis and Chloe (1912), dancers of the Ballets Russes sang Ser-ge-dia-ghi-lev during rehearsals to keep the correct rhythm.

Members of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes later went on to found ballet traditions in the United States (George Balanchine) and England (Ninette de Valois and Marie Rambert). Ballet master Serge Lifar went on to attempt a revival at the Paris Opera, (not achieved until Rudolf Nureyev succeeded at Paris Opera Ballet's revival in the 1990s). Lifar is credited for saving many Jewish and other minority dancers from the Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

This year Julian Barran will be holding an exhibition to commemorate the Ballet Russes starting in Late March and running for six weeks

Personal life

Diaghilev engaged in a number of homosexual relationships over the course of his life. His first important affair was with Dima Filasofov, his cousin, when they were both little more than adolescents; his second with Vaslav Nijinsky, who had already had a homosexual liaison with a wealthy aristocrat, partly in order to help support his mother, sister, and mentally disabled brother (his father had deserted the family). Later affairs of Diaghilev were with Boris Kochno, who served as his secretary from 1921 until the end of his life. Diaghilev had a close platonic relationship with two women, Misia Sert and the dancer Tamara Karsavina, either of whom he said he would like to have married.^{[citation needed]}

Diaghilev was known as a hard, demanding, even frightening taskmaster. Ninette de Valois, no shrinking violet, said she was too afraid to ever look him in the face. George Balanchine said he carried around a cane during rehearsals, and banged it angrily when he was displeased. Other dancers said he would shoot them down with one look, or a cold comment. On the other hand, he was capable of great kindness, and when stranded with his bankrupt company in Spain during the 1914-18 war, gave his last bit of cash to Lydia Sokolova to buy medical care for her daughter. Markova was very young when she joined the Ballet Russes and would later say that she had called Diaghilev "Sergypops" and he'd said he would take care of her like a daughter.

Diaghilev's gravestone, Isola di San Michele, Orthodox section, Venice, Italy (June, 2005)

Diaghilev dismissed Nijinsky summarily from the Ballets Russes after the dancer's marriage in 1913. Nijinsky appeared again with the company, but the old relationship between the men was never re-established; moreover, Nijinsky's magic as a dancer was much diminished by incipient madness. Their last meeting was after Nijinsky's mind had given way, and he appeared not to recognise his former lover. Dancers such as Alicia Markova, Tamara Karsavina, Serge Lifar, and Sokolova remembered Diaghilev fondly, as a stern but kind father-figure who put the needs of his dancers and company above his own. He lived from paycheck to paycheck to finance his company, and though he spent considerable amounts of money on a splendid collection of rare books at the end of his life, many people noticed that his impeccably cut suits had frayed cuffs and trouser-ends. The movie The Red Shoes is a thinly disguised dramatization of the Ballet Russes.

During his life, Diaghilev was severely afraid of dying on water. Because of this phobia he avoided traveling anywhere by boat. Ironically, Sergei Diaghilev died of diabetes in Venice, "the city built on water", on 19 August 1929, and is buried on the nearby island of San Michele.

References

1. ^ See Richard Taruskin Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions Oxford University Press, 1996: p.493
2. ^ Prince Serge Volkonsky. My reminiscences (in Russian)
3. ^ James, Clives: "Cultural Amnesia", page 169. W.W. Norton & Sons, 2007.

See also

• Nijinsky
• « Centenary of Ballets Russians of Diaghilev »[1] - two postage stamps of Monaco, created by Georgy Shishkin (Gueorgui Chichkine)
• "Monte Carlo and the Ballets Russes"

Further reading

• Buckle, Richard, author of Diaghilev, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979; the only major biography.*
• Scheijen, Sjeng, Working for Diaghilev, Gent: BAI, 2005; exhibition catalogue of the last major exhibition dedicated to Diaghilev
• Garafola, Lynn, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989

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