Le Sacre du Printemps
If you're in the mood for a little
musical and balletic history, let me take you back to a night that I often
fantasize about actually being there myself.
It was April 1913 in Paris
at the Paris Opera Ballet. Stravinsky had just recently finished composing "Le
Sacre du Printemps, “The Rite of Spring”, and it was being performed as it was
conceived in music and dance in front of Europe's elite for the first time. At
this time in history, the orchestral avant garde was still just blossoming and
even the most sophisticated of art appreciators had never had precedent to this
type of music and dance. Sergei Diaghilev was the impresario of the Ballet
Russes, and in my opinion, the most extraordinary director to ever recognize and
collaborate the finest artists in music, choreography and visual scenery ever
known to this day. Vaslav Nijinsky was the already world famous male dancer who
took for the second time his role as choreographer. In 1912, they presented
Debussy's "L'Apres Midi d'un Fuane, “The Afternoon of a Faun”, as Nijinsky's
choreographic debut which caused a scandal enough to call in Paris's police. It
was said by many that some of the movements resembled masturbation. It may be
of interest to note here that Diaghilev and Nijinsky were lovers. It's odd to
think that at this time, homosexuality wasn't considered the plague on society that it is today. Anyway, here was everyone
who was anyone, glittering in their jewels and accoutrements, waiting to see and
hear the latest release from the most renowned artistic troupe known to anyone
in the world at that time. The theatre darkens. The Rite of Spring opens
musically with the curtain down. Stravinsky's strain of a bassoon lamenting a
pagan folk melody in its highest register doesn't quite capture the audience.
The woodwinds increasingly invoke the awakenings of spring; birds chattering,
mammals scattering through the brush, in other words, art-imitating nature.
This isn't quite what the audience had in mind. The ballet's opening
culminates in a stamping repetitious dissonant chord pattern, and as the curtain
rises, here is the so called genius Nijinsky's choreography of pagan Russians in
native attire, jumping up and down and bouncing unlike anything that they could
consider before as dance. Boos were heard from the very beginning. Stravinsky,
who was present in the audience, was rightfully crushed and couldn't understand
why people would protest music that they had never heard before and in which he
had come to love. Diaghilev, who was also in the audience and not anticipating
this reaction, did his best to settle the crowd by standing up and using his
arms to lower the outburst. Nijinsky was in a panic in the wings of the stage.
They had rehearsed for months. The time signatures were almost impossible for
the average person to comprehend and even difficult for trained dancers and musicians. The dancers were having trouble hearing the music. They
couldn't quieten the audience. The commotion escalated. Soon enough, Diaghilev
ordered the house lights to be lighted off and on to try to settle the crowd,
but to no avail. Even the calmer passages in the score seemed to encourage the
audience to release their displeasure. People began throwing paper onto the
stage. Stavinsky recalls seeing and hearing Nijinsky standing on a chair
shouting numbers to the dancers that weren't even in the score. He eventually
left the theatre in a rage. He just couldn't bear it.
The next morning
they all gathered in their hotel suites in a state of total deflation reading
the horrible news reviews. Every insult imaginable was flung against them. It
seemed that every bit of their artistic souls were expended for nothing but
ridicule. They traveled back to St. Petersburg with their tails between their
legs.
It's interesting to note that, just one year later, in the very
same place, when Le Sacre was performed as a concert piece rather than a ballet,
that some of the crowd was so enthusiastic that they actually carried Stravinsky
upon their shoulders down the Champs Elysees toward the Arch de Triumphe in
glory like a prized fighter.