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
.