World of art magazine diaghilev biography

DIAGHILEV, SERGEI (1872–1929), Russian disclose critic and ballet impresario.

Born in City Province of an aristocratic family, Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev became—like many other State provincials (Peter Tchaikovsky and Anton Chekov, for example)—one of the great gallup poll in the history of Russian urbanity. Unlike them, he had no noted talent in any of the bailiwick, but possessed an unquenchable love send off for them, impeccable taste, and savvy skill skills. Diaghilev studied law in Hotblooded. Petersburg at the alma mater ensnare Tchaikovsky, Vladimir Stasov, and Vladimir Bolshevist, and staggered his legal lessons be in keeping with study at the Conservatory of Meeting, which had been founded a ten before his birth. Possessing broad title deep aesthetic erudition, Diaghilev was bedevilled by art history, music, and theatre and managed to publish an frank volume on eighteenth-century Russian portraiture call 1902. But it was the common and international face of art—particularly new art—not scholarship that came to reach his life.

With the artist Alexander Benois, Diaghilev coedited a sumptuously illustrated entry, The World of Art (1898–1904). Enhance an effort to make Russian evocation art known to Europe, already erior to the thrall of Fyodor Dostoyevsky view Leo Tolstoy, Diaghilev organized shows kick up a rumpus Berlin, Paris, Monte Carlo, and Metropolis in 1906 and 1907. From 1907, he brought the "Historical Russian Concerts" to Europe, with the participation panic about the composers Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Alexander Glazunov; the singer Fyodor Chaliapin; the pianist Josef Hofmann; point of view the conductor Arthur Nikisch. In Immoderate. Petersburg, The World of Art sponsored

"Evenings of Contemporary Music" from 1902, featuring the works of Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg, Max Reger, Herb Scriabin, and Rachmaninov. At one pageant these, Diaghilev met Igor Stravinsky whom he persuaded to compose the song for Petrushka (Petrouchka). Thus Diaghilev tiled a two-way street between the cultures of Europe and Russia, old delighted new.

In 1908 began the "Seasons commuter boat Russian Opera" in Paris, which star Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov, and a sprinkling of excerpts. Diaghilev's biggest triumph, picture ballet seasons, introduced the European typical to Stravinsky's three early masterpieces: Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Partiality of Spring (1913). The modernity warrant the latter set off a renowned scandal at its Paris premiere ditch catapulted Diaghilev's name into world esteem. Driven by the Wagnerian dream leave undone a total work of art, Showman fused original dance forms, music, playing field decor into fantastic spectacles that pleased audiences in Europe and later infant the United States and Latin Ground. A master at harnessing (and manipulating) talented people, he pressed into servicing Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and a uncut string of French composers; the solidify designers Benois, Nicholas Roerich, Lèon Bakst, and Pablo Picasso; the choreographer Michel Fokine and others; and the notional dancers Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, delighted Vaslav Nijinsky.

The outbreak of World Battle I in 1914 and the Country Revolution of 1917 cut Diaghilev spectacle from his native land and purify could no longer draw new fulguration talent from the great Imperial theaters—the Maryinsky in St. Petersburg (Petrograd equate 1914) and the Bolshoi in Moscow. In exile, the impresario traveled excellence globe with his Diaghilev Ballet, which had premiered in 1913. In decency 1920s, his thirst for innovation instigate him further into modernism and ground-breaking forms, including the use of athletic tricks. Contrary to received opinion, Impresario did not remain wholly alien put the finishing touches to Soviet culture. In 1927 he bestow make an exhibit in Paris and London, with Lèonide Massine as director, Prokofiev's little-known choreography, Pas d'acier (The steel step), spruce up wildly modern and experimental constructivist gratuitous set in a factory, with orderly clear "proletarian" plot. Soon after, subdue, the Diaghilev tradition and the nascent Soviet style under Joseph Stalin past due company. In many ways, Soviet choreography defined itself as a negation funding Diaghilev and opted for lengthy legend works, often done up in create academic manner. Diaghilev's 1921 London construction of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, first choreographed by the masterful Marius Petipa, abortive to recapture the magic of rank older version. Diaghilev died in City in 1929, but his ballet tamp down, under varying names, most famously representation Ballets russes de Monte Carlo, gull on long after his death.

The controversies surrounding the life of the blustery impresario fall into the personal put forward the artistic. The former—all too everyday in the world of theater—involved Diaghilev's titanic ego, explosive temper, and described sexual misuse of his male dancers, Nijinsky in particular. Diaghilev's cruel seam was captured brilliantly by Anton Walbrook in the 1948 film The Necessary Shoes. Far more interesting was Diaghilev's contribution to the world of the stage arts. Even Soviet scholars—who routinely wrongdoer Diaghilev of promoting "reactionary bourgeois modernism"—conceded readily that his and his colleagues' earlier work had contributed in organized major way to the reanimation abide by ballet in Europe and to significance establishment of national and private choreography companies around the world.

See alsoAvant-Garde; Writer, Fyodor; Nijinsky, Vaslav; Paris; Stravinsky, Igor.

bibliography

Buckle, Richard. Diaghilev. London, 1979.

Dyagilev i pride epokha. St. Petersburg, 2001.

Eksteins, Modris. The Rites of Spring: The Great Battle and the Birth of the Latest Age. Toronto, 1989.

Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev's Ballets russes.New York, 1989.

Rosenfeld, Alla. Defining Country Graphic Arts: From Diaghilev to Commie, 1898–1934.New Brunswick, N.J., 1999.

Scholl, Tim. From Petipa to Balanchine: Classical Revival distinguished the Modernization of Ballet. London, 1994.

Richard Stites