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Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev
(1872 - 1929)
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 Speaking
of Diaghilev by John Drummond
A must for balletomanes, here is a portrait of
Serge Diaghilev, the genius behind the Ballets Russes de Monte
Carlo--the legendary troupe that set the standard for ballet for
generations.
"How could any book about Diaghilev be
boring? This was the man who brought Chaliapin in Boris Godunov to
Paris then Pavlova, the man who originated more than 70 ballet
productions with great performers like Nijinsky, great artists
like Picasso, great composers like Stravinsky. John Drummond, who
famously ran the Proms and the Edinburgh festival for many years,
took on the project of filming a two part documentary about the
great impresario in the 1960's but decided the interviews with his
surviving co-workers were too good to waste and prints them in
full. Every single one is a treasure trove for ballet fans. He
bookends these interviews with, at the beginning, the full story
of how he tracked down the living survivors of the Ballets Russe,
and at the end a provocative and thought-provoking essay about the
development of world ballet since Diaghilev's death , right up to
Adventures in Motion pictures Swan Lake 1994. I read this book
right through in two days, and I'm buying another copy to lend to
friends. Absolutely superb, and some nice archive photos too."
-- Tom Brooks
"...a true
contribution to dance history and a fitting tribute to a great
man." -- Robert Gottlieb, The New York Times Book
Review
 Paris
Dances Diaghilev (1990)
"This is a beautifully filmed, danced and
played video with the Paris Opera Ballet recreating classic
Diaghilev/Ballet Russe masterpieces such as Petrushka, Prelude to
the Afternoon of a Faun, Invitation to the Dance and Les Noces.
Choreography, costumes and sets have all been carefully recreated
to look the way they did on opening night. In the case of
Petrushka, the ballet helps to explain the musical structure. And
the original ending of Faun allows you to see why it created
controversy. This is a must-see for all ballet and classical music
lovers, and especially for music teachers. I have used it
extensively in my college music classes. (Why play Petrushka for
your students when you can have them watch it the way Stravinsky
intended?)" -- Anonymous Review
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This tribute site by Jim Fowler has much to
offer the Diaghilev enthusiast, including photos, diary excerpts,
.
Excerpt:
 The
great impresario belonged to the Russian nobility and was born in
Russia in 1872. At University he was supposed to study law, but
soon discovered that he only wanted to study the arts. He edited a
review The World of Art and then joined the administration
of of the Imperial Theatres.
He decided that the ballet needed revitalizing
but his unconventional ideas were not appreciated in Russia and he
was obliged to go to France to mount the new ballets which fired
his imagination. In 1909 he took Russian dancers and singers to
Paris, the first step in 20 years of ballet presentation. Les
Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev then appeared often in
Paris, London and other European cities, and later America.
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Excerpt:
Diaghilev collaborated with the most famous
artists, composers and dancers of the period. Artists like
Alexandre Benois, Leon Bakst, Nicolas Roerich, Pablo Picasso,
Henri Matisse. He got composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei
Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussey and Erik Satie to name a
few, to compose new music for the ballet. He encouraged Mikhail
Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, Leonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska and
George Balanchine to choreograph new ballets for the company...
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Excerpt
The turn of the century saw a relaxation of the
laws, and a corresponding increase in tolerance and visibility. In
1903 Vladimir Nabokov, father of the writer and a founder of the
Constitutional Democrat party, published an article on the legal
status of homosexuals in Russia in which he argued that the state
should not interfere in private sexual relationships. The period
between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 was the Silver Age in
Russian literature, but something of a golden age for Russian
homosexuals. Many important figures led open gay lives, including
several members of the Imperial Court. Sergei Diaghilev and many
of the members of the World of Art movement and the Russian ballet
were gay. In 1906 Mikhail
Kuzmin published his semi-autobiographical coming out novel Wings,
which became the talk of the literary world in Russia...
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
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